Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.

To be adult is to be alone.

Whatever China I'd been born into, I would probably still have become a painter - I loved sketching portraits as a child, and began art classes at the age 7. But if China hadn't been under Maoist rule, I might never have become a writer.

I am trying to persuade my family to spend more time in China. It's no fun to be in exile. I can't even figure out the basic 26 letters, let alone operate, in English. I often feel that although I've found the sky of freedom above my head, I've lost the soil I stand on. I need to be back in my motherland, where I can find inspirations.

After the Tiananmen Massacre, I felt compelled not only to continue writing but to actively resist the restrictions placed on freedom of speech. I set up the publishing company in Hong Kong, with offices in Shenzhen in mainland China, and managed to publish works of fiction, philosophy, and politics by unapproved authors.

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.

When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased.

I love giving gifts. It's almost like I don't open my gifts until, like, three days after Christmas 'cause I want to give everyone else their presents.

Christmas is always the most fun. I start looking forward to Christmas before it's even summertime.

I don't think there were great beauty trends in the '90s - I was just doing my own thing.

You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner strength, and say, 'I'm proud of what I am and who I am, and I'm just going to be myself.'

My fans have made all my career moments special for me. They are the ones that have gotten me through every single thing - good times and bad, they are who I go to and lean on. I am very thankful for that.

Trust is not very easy for me at all. I want to be a trusting person, but I've been bruised so many times - not to sound woe-is-me about my life.

Since having the babies, I realize that 90 percent of losing weight is my diet.

Art is the triumph over chaos.

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.

When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places.

Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.

The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.

Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.

Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.

Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so.

I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.

Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.

A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.

Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy.

It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

It takes a good deal of physical courage to ride a horse. This, however, I have. I get it at about forty cents a flask, and take it as required.

Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.

One Christmas, I wrote a nativity play. But nobody turned up on the day of the performance apart from my brother and my cousins, so I just read the whole script onstage and made my brother pretend to be one of the animals at the inn.

A lot of stuff doesn't faze me. I think it's because I was brought up in a small town, and normally, when you're from a small town, when you see a famous person, you'd be like, 'Oh my god. This never happens,' but I've always kind of been like nonchalant.

I'm not with a label, so I haven't ever felt pressure to be a certain way. I've got a cool team who just love music.

I want to be a voice people listen to and feel good or sad or whatever.

Independence is doing what you want to do, knowing that you're happy with the decisions you're making and that it's the best for you.

My dad will always criticize me. He doesn't care if it hurts my feelings. If I start acting a certain way, he would be like, 'Who do you think you are?' So many people can tell me, 'You're amazing,' but I don't think it. I'm really hard on myself.

Nudity has never seemed to bother Grace Jones. Her art has thrived, in part, on a physical candor that both shocked people and redrew the boundaries of taste, beauty, and eroticism around her masculinity, ebony skin, and unrelenting intensity.

Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.

Part of what's mesmerizing about 'The Mechanics of History' is its physical eloquence - how dancerly it is. The men don't fall; they float. And when the trampoline restores them to the staircase, they move at a half speed. Cinema, they say, is 24 frames per second.

I don't like turkey. I mean, I do. But I don't like it on Thanksgiving. I don't need it. There are about 20 other dishes that get put on a table or a counter or that stay warming on the stove that I'd rather eat than turkey.

A week before Thanksgiving, my mother bought the turkey, frozen. Then she froze it some more. Then she let it thaw and cleaned it - and I mean really cleaned it, because nobody wanted a 'dirty bird.' She salt-and-peppered the turkey, buttered, paprika-ed, and nominally stuffed it.

My mother very rarely skipped a Thanksgiving turkey. And yet, none of them ever tasted quite the same, landing somewhere on a sliding scale of succulence. She'd try new methods.

'In Bruges' featured two hit men on a chatty stroll in Belgium, and certain people's passion for it is fit for Valentine's Day. But it was Tupperware Tarantino to me.

When Oliver Stone and Woody Allen came forward to express sympathy for Mr. Weinstein, everybody rolled their eyes at them, too.

As a younger man, I thought the best thing art could do was to challenge people's mindsets, and I still do, but I've come round to the value of entertainment. A show like 'The Interceptor,' which gives the audience that release, after a hard day, of just sitting down and enjoying themselves - that adds value to lives, too.