Quotes By Ang Lee

Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done.

I grew up pretty peacefully, in that Eastern way. You easily solve problems, believe in harmony. Reduce conflicts, take orders until one day you give orders.

I feel like all of my characters now take this congested situation, they clash, and from there you purge yourself.

You become the movie you are making.

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.

I do like challenge.

These days I'm mostly familiar with two parts of L.A.: one is movie culture, and the other is Asian culture. The Westside is work, and the Eastside is Chinese - which means my friends.

I had to test a new terror in myself.

I look at American movies, the big muscles, and try to apply that to Chinese film-making.

I'm a storyteller.

Every movie is unknown.

Sensitivity and money are like parallel lines. They don't meet.

I think a movie is a media that is evoking feelings.

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.

I think great romance needs great obstacles and textures.

My mother loves me and everything goes well. I have no conflict with her, so that's not dramatic.

Summer blockbusters are very expensive to make. They have things that have to be expensive, such as 600 effects shots or CG characters that have to go a certain way, or a film design that is different but expensive.

My culture doesn't regard acting highly.

For six years, from 1985 to 1991, I felt pretty weak and useless.

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

You can get rich or famous by doing the same thing.

Some actors give you what you want. Some you have to make do what you want.

Film study was considered disgraceful by my father.

So many times you see beautiful lovemaking scenes with a lot of exposure or an awkward lovemaking scene, but I think it's very rare that you see it private.

I wanted to shoot straight, mainstream, somehow off-beat. Not only realistic West, which is quite unfamiliar to the world's population - even to a lot of Americans.

The way I go about a lovemaking scene is that we will talk about it during the rehearsing time.

The woman's perspective is like the dark side of the moon: it always exists, but it is never exposed, at least not in my culture.

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

There's a level of sophistication of filmmaking that's mind-boggling. Anything you need for your movie, there's an establishment that can make it happen really fast.

I try to please everyone.