“If you have been yourself you cannot reasonably be punished, but if you have been somebody else you will find that this is not permitted.”

“The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation.”

“I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”

“The worst thing about Beijing is that you can never trust the judicial system. Without trust, you cannot identify anything; it’s like a sandstorm. You don’t see yourself as part of the city—there are no places that you relate to, that you love to go. You have no memory of any material, texture, shape. Everything is constantly changing, according to somebody else’s will, somebody else’s power.”

“Regardless of what you may think about yourself or what you have been told about yourself or what you may have been taught to believe about yourself… THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU. THERE NEVER WAS.”

“You have punished me long enough, you have punished yourself long enough. Return to me. I beg.”

“If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

“[Freedom of speech] isn't something somebody else gives you. That's something you give to yourself.”

“Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.”

“If you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan.”