Ma Jian

“If you exile a writer, however free the country he is sent to, there will always be a sense of internal constraint.”

“I wanted to analyse and understand how the Chinese people could have their lives so crushed by fear.”

“'Three Kingdoms' gives you a panoply of different routes; everyone can find their own path. It shows that sometimes the route to fulfilment or success is not the obvious one. You must take twists and turns to achieve a goal.”

“I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.”

“I believe that the Tibetans should have the right to control their own destinies and decide for themselves whether they want to be part of China or not. But this view isn't shared by most Chinese, or even the leaders of most Western democracies. As long as the Communist Party is in power, there is little hope for Tibet.”

“While I was writing 'Stick Out Your Tongue' in Beijing, the police began knocking on my door again. As soon as I finished the book, I moved to Hong Kong so that I could work undisturbed on my next novel.”

“In 1989, I was on Tiananmen Square with the students, living in their makeshift tents and joining their jubilant singing of the Internationale. In the two decades since, each time that I have gone back, visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence.”

“I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny.”

“I am completely in favour of dialogue and engagement. But it must be a true, open dialogue.”

“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.”

“When the written and spoken word is censored, the urban landscape becomes a nation's only physical link to the past.”

“On the face of it, China has won the Olympics. But it is not China that has won, but the Communist party. The Chinese people have lost.”

“Living in London is like being on a luxury cruise liner.”

“I left Beijing in the late 1980s to live in Hong Kong because, having been blacklisted by the government, I couldn't publish my works on the mainland.”

“When people are poor, they find ways of making things taste like fish.”

“The Chinese have made a faustian pact with the government, agreeing to forsake demands for political and intellectual freedom in exchange for more material comfort. They live prosperous lives in which any expression of pain is forbidden.”

“The Beijing Olympics represent China's grand entrance onto the world stage and confirmation of its new superpower status.”

“I left Beijing because I wanted to be alone and to forge my own path, but I know now that no path is solitary, we all tread across other people's beginnings and ends.”

“It is vitally important for me, both personally and for my writing, to be able to return to China freely, so being barred entry has caused me deep concern and distress.”

“My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.”