Better a superstitious believer than a rational unbeliever.
China is more prosperous than before. The people have better lives but they are not happy and confident because the scars are still there.
At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general.
If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet.
As a child, my idea of the West was that it was a miasma of poverty and misery, like that of the homeless 'Little Match Girl'in the Hans Christian Andersen story. When I was in the boarding nursery and did not want to finish my food, the teacher would say:'Think of all the starving children in the capitalist world!
If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else.
I like to have Chinese furniture in my home as a constant and painful reminder of how much has been destroyed in China. The contrast between the beauty of the past and the ugliness of the modern is nowhere sharper than in China.
I spend a lot of time trying to not do anything bad to anyone, but you can't live your life and not hurt people.
I am a product. . . I'm a comedian. I'm not curing cancer. In the end, I tell jokes. I make people laugh. I make sense out of ridiculous situations, but in the end, it's all about laughter. It's all about your cheek hurting, your stomach hurting.
No matter how sexually attracted a man might be toward other men, or a woman toward other women, and no matter how close the bonds of affection and friendship might be within same-sex couples, there is no act of court or Congress that can make these relationships the same as the coupling between a man and a woman.
Take me someplace where we can be silent together.