"I've never been to the Soviet Union and the main reason for that is I was warned several times by people from the KGB who had defected to the West that it would be very unsafe for me to go there"

“A strong man can handle a strong woman. A weak man will say she has an attitude problem”

Source : Twitter post from Dec 15, 2013

“I am a person always full of contradictions... It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.”

Source : "Living legend: Ba Jin". www.newsgd.com. November 26, 2003.

“Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums,”

Source : "Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall". Book by Banksy, 2001.

“Everyone tells us you really don't know what you're capable of till you're in the middle of it.”

Source : "From musical to memoir, actor Anthony Rapp comes up with dramatic making-of 'Rent' story and moving personal one" by David Wiegand, www.sfgate.com. February 21, 2006.

“What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in serious music.”

Source : "Sovetskoye Iskusstvo", quoted in "Shostakovich: A Life", transl. by Laurel Fay (2000) p. 77, November 5, 1934.

“I don't want to be on the bandwagon of dogging any president or anybody in positions where they have all these different constituencies.”

Source : Source: therumpus.net

“There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?”

“Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.”

Source : "Dr. Stuart Firestein's Scientific Method Speech on Question Propagation" by Alyson Wyers, www.trendhunter.com. October 27, 2013.