Cai Guo-Qiang's Quotes

Computer animation is one way to liberate people from their circumstantial gravity, and it is one way to give them mental freedom.

I have always been a coward as a child. I am not very brave. I am very aware of the fact that I am not very gutsy.

My work is like a dialogue between me and unseen powers, like alchemy.

Even though Chinese society was really closed, there were two windows for me to explore the world. One was from my mother and grandmother, the unseen and invisible world. Another window was brought from my father's side, those classic and Western books.

For an artist, a good place to be is you have some kind of influence and power to get things done, but in your essence you remain a nomad or a soldier facing a difficulty to be overcome.

In any country, in any city, there will be political influence on what is said, what kind of images are to be projected and, yes, of course artists can be and are influenced by politicians.

When I was young, I didn't want to do traditional painting and calligraphy. I deliberately wanted to separate from my father so I could feel I existed myself.

Abraham Lincoln comes from nothing, has no education, no money, lives in the middle of nowhere on the frontier. And despite the fact that he suffers one tragedy and one setback after another, through sheer force of will, he becomes something extraordinary: not only the president but the person who almost single-handedly united the country.

I understand exactly what I am.

I'm a big, bombastic novelist and thrill-ride guy. I'm never going to win the National Book Award.

It was this weird confrontation of these two delicious flavors that got me consciously or subconsciously combining Lincoln and vampires as an observational in-joke with myself.