Ang Lee

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.

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.

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

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.

Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.

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

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

I think the book struck me in a few ways that I thought very interesting to pick it as my first martial arts film. It has a very strong female character and it was very abundant in classic Chinese textures.

I think the American West really attracts me because it's romantic. The desert, the empty space, the drama.

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

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

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.

Emotions serve characters' purposes. That is their motivation.

I feel that everyone has a Hulk inside, and each of our Hulks is both scary and, potentially, pleasurable. That's the scariest thing about them.

My culture doesn't regard acting highly.

I hate to think life is just facts and laws.

I find it hard to deliver straightforward things.

I don't have a superpower.

When I have a full schedule like that, I don't see myself sitting there for a couple of months, doing the research, going through a painful process, it's just not my thing anymore.

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

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

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

As artists, we like night more than day sometimes.

The source of all the material comes from nothingness, illusion is working more on things you can prove. That's the principle, the essence of life, it is actually an illusion, not immaterial. That's worth pursuing. So illusion is not nothing. In a way, that is the truth.

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

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

You become the movie you are making.

I try to please everyone.

I hope people don't compare 2D and 3D because 3D's new, it's unfair to compare to 2D which is really sophisticated, even when we're jaded about it. 3D just began, give it a chance, let the equipment and projection system catch up and be better, let the price go down, let more filmmakers get a hold of it more easily.

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

I did a women's movie, and I'm not a woman. I did a gay movie, and I'm not gay. I learned as I went along.

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

The father figure is something I love, but also suffocate from and want to work against.

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

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.

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

My first instinct was to cast as close to the short story as possible, but then I realized that I needed actors who could go for it and that they had to function well as a couple in a love story.

Making movies is a way of understanding myself and the world.

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?'

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

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

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.

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

Meanwhile, the Ice Storm was still in development, And that was something I really wanted to do, and frankly I don't think I was ready to do a big production like this.

I'm a shy human being.

I am a shy person.

I think people are universal.

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

I was very quiet, very shy and docile.

My cultural roots are something illusive.

Sometimes films ignore other points of view because it's simpler to tell the story that way, but the more genuine and sympathetic you are to different points of view and situations, the more real the story is.

I like to do drama, something about life that could be disappointing.

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

To me, Ennis stands for the conservative side of America. He's the biggest homophobe in the whole movie - culturally and psychologically - but by the time he admits his feelings, it's too late.

I think I can work with any type of actor.

Sexuality is a big issue, but there are others - how much you commit to a relationship, to social obligation, to honesty and being honest with yourself.

The L.A. weather is a lot like Taiwan's, where you don't observe four seasons, so the years can pass and you don't feel a thing.

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.

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

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 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 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.

I'm a storyteller.

I'm still a novice student.

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 don't like to deal with studios.

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.

Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn't a hit, you shouldn't view it as a mistake.

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

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

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

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

A movie is really provocation. It's not a message, it's not a statement.

I'm just a pretty regular dad.

I do like challenge.

The most mysterious feminine factor, the existence that we men, we don't know. It's woman. It's feminine. That's what the sword is about. That's the symbolic meaning of the sword.

I'm a drifter and an outsider. There's not one single environment I can totally belong to.

I think doing period piece is easier, because after a certain distance, everybody is equal, I think. The relative contemporary is harder. I think that's the way it is.

Fighting for identity is something that is very much in my life.

I think I prefer 3D to 2D now.

I like to think I'm un-categorisable.

Every movie is unknown.

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

On a Chinese film you just give orders, no one questions you. Here, you have to convince people, you have to tell them why you want to do it a certain way, and they argue with you. Democracy.

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.

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

I have two sons in America, and all they care about in Chinese culture is Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

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

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

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

I'm such a late bloomer.

Not taboo - it's just that straight actors still risk their careers commercially and economically. They have to please the crowd - they're movie stars; their image is their industry. It goes beyond acting.

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

I don't lead a Hollywood lifestyle.

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

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

When there is a strong woman character in a story - that always grabs me.

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.

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 don't care about writing really.