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The world today needs both western thinking and oriental vision.

'Orientalism' has successfully built my critical awareness to question and see the big picture of knowledge, perspective or idea from a Western point of view and always see things from different perspective.

The Oriental thinks everything in the sense-perceptible world is 'maya'; everything perceived by our senses and all thinking connected with sense perceptions is 'maya,' the great illusion. The only reality is the reality of the soul. What a human being achieves in his or her soul is reality.

Although, this is often used with negative connotations, I see ideology as an inherent part of culture.

All the traditional westerns are about choice and the individual. When progress comes it's much more difficult to define the individual in that world.

My tendency to idealize Western civilization arises from my nationalistic desire to use the West in order to reform China. But this has led me to overlook the flaws of Western culture.

I would say both Western psychology and Eastern paths would recognize that we get caught up in feeling like a separate self and an unworthy self.

Culture is mix. Culture means a mix of things from other sources. And my town, Istanbul, was this kind of mix. Istanbul, in fact, and my work, is a testimony to the fact that East and West combine cultural gracefully, or sometimes in an anarchic way, came together, and that is what we should search for.

In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.

I have viewed the West as if it were not only the salvation of China but also the natural and ultimate destination of all humanity.