Top 169 Quotes & Sayings by Ang Lee - Page 2

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

Emotions serve characters' purposes. That is their motivation.

If there's something that can be formulated, regulated, give you security, then nobody would lose money. Every movie would be successful. And that's certainly not the case.

I'm just a pretty regular dad.

My father was the center of the family, and everyone tried to please him.

Directing, I get all kinds of inspiration. It's working with people. It's a lot more fun.

I'm aware of what's missing from my life.

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

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.

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

When I'm not working, I get very down, but when I am working, I get very immersed in it.

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 think that at heart I am an old-fashioned Chinese, really I am.

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

I'm still a novice student.

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 find it hard to deliver straightforward things.

I don't have incredible knowledge about films or of filmmaking history; I'm not that kind of person.

I don't know if I make the best gay films.

I'm a storyteller.

What is really a stretch to me is to make quick decisions.

Americans are hidden dragons to me.

No matter how widely spread out the films are, how different, you still are you.

For a filmmaker, it's a rare chance to do a personal film on a big canvas.

I'm a big boy now, and I have to deliver.

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.

It's not a pleasure torturing actors, although some of them enjoy it.

I think life without spirit is in the dark, it is absurd.

I hate to think life is just facts and laws.

I think great romance needs great obstacles and textures.

I guess in Hollywood you chart your life by Oscars. You say to each other, 'Remember when that movie won that year? It was 2006. Remember that?'

There's only one movie in my career I've had regrets with cutting it shorter, and I think some scenes maybe I shouldn't have cut.

I don't have a superpower.

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

I think I prefer 3D to 2D now.

Everyone in the gay community doesn't think alike.

I think a lot of people do big movies not because they are talented artists but because they can function in the circumstances.

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

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

I'm not a master of films, I'm rather a slave.

Film study was considered disgraceful by my father.

I had to test a new terror in myself.

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.

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

I don't like to deal with studios.

I don't think the Hulk is a superhero. He's the first Marvel character who is a tragic monster. Really an anti-hero.

I'm a shy human being.

I'm actually living my life with the material I choose to work with.

I grew up pretty much prevented from knowing anything from Communist China except that they were the bad guys that stole our country.

I think I can work with any type of actor.

I don't care about writing really.

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

My cultural roots are something illusive.

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

When I started out, nobody gave me scripts, so I had to write.

I had to find my way of translating the excitement you get when you're reading comic books to the big screen.

I do like challenge.

Economically, it's more expensive to make movies. I hope digital movies change that.

As artists, we like night more than day sometimes.

Over the years Woodstock got glorified and romanticised and became the event that symbolised Utopia. It's the last page of our collective memory of the age of innocence. Then things turned ugly and would never be the same again.