I've always been very insecure and had a lot of self-doubt growing up. That was partially because of how I was raised.

I've always experimented with my look. Growing up, I thought it was so weird that people dressed alike and all bought the same things.

Juanes is one of the legendary, iconic Colombian artists. Growing up in Colombia, you can't really not have him on your radar. His songs are everywhere, and there's a statue of him. He's pretty big for Latin America, and for Colombia especially.

N.E.R.D. was also from - not too far from where I was from growing up. For a lot of people who make music, that was a huge influence in teen years.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

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.

To me, Berlin is as much a conceit as a reality. Why? Because the city is forever in the process of becoming, never being, and so lives more powerfully in the imagination.

For me music is pretty personal. I generally listen to it alone, and I've never been a lover of concerts. So I don't think I really bond with other people over music. That's not unique to music for me, either. I feel that way about film, television, art, everything. I read a book alone, so why wouldn't I listen to music alone?