Quote

During the Cultural Revolution, the communists came in, and what they wanted to do was eradicate all sense of traditional Chinese culture.

It's taken us 10 years, and it was constant excitement. I was constantly shocked by how evil he could be. Mao was very, very shrewd but he didn't have human feeling.

The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings.

Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society.

Although I never marched through the streets shouting for Mao, I do believe that the liberation of China at the end of the 1940s was a wonderful thing and to provide its people with a billion pairs of shoes and trousers was a fantastic achievement.

The Naxalite revolution - an ultra-left Maoist movement - in Bengal, and elsewhere in India, in the late 1960s provides one strand of 'The Lives of Others.'

It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that, then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics.

One word from Chairman Mao is worth ten thousand from others. His every statement is truth. We must carry out those we that understand as well as those we don't.

For forty years, I have devoted myself to the cause of the people's revolution with but one aim in view - the elevation of China to a position of freedom and equality among the nations.

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