Ang Lee Quotes - Page 5

Thinking back to those earlier days, I felt I was weak when I wasn't making movies, and then when I was, I thought I was weak as a family member.

My hometown was one of the major U.S. Air Force bases.

When I sent those scripts, that was the lowest point of my life. We'd just had our second son, and when I went to collect them from hospital, I went to the bank to try and get some money to buy some diapers, the screen showed I've got $26 left.

Americans are hidden dragons to me.

I think each movie-making process is a very exhausting and satisfying and fulfilling experience for me.

I'm not a romantic. In life I didn't have much experience with romance.

San Francisco is one of my favourite cities in the world...I would probably rank it at the top or near the top. It's small but photogenic and has layers...You never have problems finding great angles that people have never done.

In Taiwan, I'd be like Michael Jordan walking down the street.

I took the name Green Destiny from - well there is such a sword called Green Destiny. It is green because you keep twisting it, it's an ancient skill, you keep twisting it and knocking it and twisting it until it is very elastic and light.

I am not particularly religious. But I think we do face the question of where God is, why we are created and where does life go, why we exist. That sort of thing. And it is very hard to talk about it these days, because it cannot be proven. It is hard to discuss it rationally.

In the past I've made movies that were pretty universally liked. You can't really hate them. You can discard them, but you can't really hate them.

When I see something I like, that's all that counts. What they use, how they get there, I never bother them.

The thing we call critics are not really reviewers, they are not really critics. They don't have the discipline to write what we would term as critique - it's really just reviewers. They have a common man kind of taste. If you watch them overall, they are not different from the box-office. That's my view.

Usually with this genre the first thing that happens is a good fight sequence to show that you're in good hands. So we broke that rule. I think a lot of that comes from the western audience.

3D is quite a lot more advanced in animated movies; for live-action movies we're just taking baby steps, we're just in the beginning.

I have a lot of repression. So repression is what I make movies about.

In my culture, there's a tradition that when you're in an overwhelming situation and you don't know what to do, you put yourself in a woman's shoes.

You become the movie you are making.

When something possesses me, I go ahead and do it.

I don't like to deal with studios. I don't like to have conversations with executives. I pitch to the studio, then never talk to them until the test screening.

After making several tragic movies in a row, I was looking to do a comedy, and one without cynicism.

Making this movie as a period piece about a period that was very recent in people's minds. I was in Taiwan [during the 1970s], so I hope I did all right. Otherwise, it could be the biggest embarrassment of my life. Also, the story is not linear, it's patchy, like a cubist painting, and there is always the possibility it will not hold together, it will fall apart. The tone is part satire, part serious drama, part tragedy, all mixed together, and it has to hit an emotional core. That's also very scary.

I'm just a pretty regular dad.

If the movie is quiet I generally feel the audience is busy. That's when they're working.

If it was a choice between making movies and doing nothing, he'd probably still wish me to make movies, So he made me keep going.