I was growing up in a society that exerted a lot of control on people, and from both my personality and the social condition, I found gunpowder gradually as a very suitable medium for exploration.

My father was also a painter - actually, a traditional Chinese painter. His personality is pretty timid and cautious. Like him, I was growing up as a cautious kid.

The role of art in society is not to resolve conflicts; rather, it is to express these conflicts and antagonisms.

Using gunpowder as a medium became a way to liberate myself.

For some reason I can't explain, artist and musicians tend to look younger than our age. Being in music, you need this youthful sense of discovery and wonder for what you're doing and keep your imagination open. That's a youthful way of looking at life and I think that reflects in how you age.

I worked as a writer, lead designer, and creative director in the game industry.

Although, from the point of view of sociology, the overt ambition of 'American Pastoral' - to imagine the impact on a good man of America's fall from the family decencies of the '30s and '40s to the self-centred violence of the '60s - outstrips anything Sabbath's Theater attempts, the writing is no less fervid an excurse into the writer's mind.

Chess masters don't evaluate all the possible moves. They know how to discard 98 percent of the ones they could make and then focus on the best choice of the remaining lot. That's the way expertise works in other fields, too: Wise practitioners recognize familiar patterns and put their creativity, improvisation, and skill toward the marginal cases.