I'm not really interested in politics, because I think it's just too removed from my own life. If there's a war, though, or a disaster, I want to know what's happening.

Actually I ran away from school when I was 13. No one could find me, and the police were called. I was just hiding in a little thicket of grass at my school, and went to sleep.

From beginning to end I worried that Ang Lee wouldn't be satisfied with my work. So I worked as hard as I could to earn his trust, because you only get a chance like this once.

Most people spend their whole lives looking for the right job. There are others who never get an opportunity to do work that fulfils them.

Wanting to be in a Western film won't get me very far. Unless the opportunity arose, it doesn't matter how much I want to be in one. But if an opportunity did arise, no actor would pass it up.

That whole environment was just incompatible with my beliefs and my personality. It was a dark time for me.

When two people first meet, they can only have a very ordinary kind of friendship. But when you begin to understand each other, when you get close to them, you discover that you're suddenly eager to know him or her even better.

We're still working out the details, but I'd be delighted to do the film. The problem at the moment is my busy schedule. Shooting on this film has been extended by a month, but I need to be in the U.S. by Dec. 20.

Ordinarily if an actor gets chosen for the lead in a film, he or she has already built up a repertoire, and everyone knows what he or she is capable of.

They're not willing to admit that I've also shed blood and tears and often paid dearly for my success. This makes me feel extremely sad.

There was one very special scene at the end of the film. My character, Zhao Di, has been sick. She wakes up and her mother tells her that the man she loves has come back from the city and had spent the day by her bedside.

Absolutely not, because in acting I've found a domain that suits me perfectly. And that is so utterly rare.

When I watch a movie for the first few times I'm usually thinking about where I was in a given scene, who was next to me, what we were doing etc. But after I've gotten through all of this, when I'm really watching the film itself, then I get moved.

Men are different. When they are in love they may also have other girlfriends.

Obviously I'd love to work with any of these great directors because every time I've worked with them I've gained a tremendous amount as an actor. Each director has his own way of pushing you towards improving yourself.

There are actors who spend 20 years working and still don't achieve what I've achieved so quickly. So I think my only course of action is to work as hard as I can, not just for the sake of the film, but also to prove to these people that I do have talent.

Zhang Yimou is always going to need young, pretty girls for his films. But I don't really concern myself with what Zhang Yimou's next starlet looks like.

After I learn more English, I'll work hard and make more films.

The atmosphere at my school was very competitive. Young girls were competing with each other every day for status, for leadership, for the affection of the teachers. I hated it.

Today's China is not in the least shut out from the rest of the world. Trends come to us from all over the world. And the Internet is really developed in China. We get news from all over the world.

I'm not really interested in politics, because I think it's just too removed from my own life. If there's a war, though, or a disaster, I want to know what's happening.

Yes. Otherwise I could have done a lot of Hollywood movies. After Crouching Tiger I got a lot of offers, but I turned them down because they were all victim roles - poor girls sold to America to be a wife or whatever. I know I have the ability to go deeper, to take on more original roles than that.

There are films you see that only reach your eyes. Then there are films that you can watch... that reach down to your throat, or reach your heart. "In the Mood for Love," though, reached all the way to my belly.

I wanted to escape so badly. But of course I knew I couldn't just give up and leave school. It was only when I heard my mom's voice that I came out of my hiding place.

There are films you see that only reach your eyes. Then there are films that you can watch... that reach down to your throat, or reach your heart. 'In the Mood for Love,' though, reached all the way to my belly.

If the economy becomes disembodied from society it can only lead to disaster.

The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.

Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?

Unlike most major American cities, Honolulu is geographically insulated from the rest of the country. When disaster strikes we cannot call on neighboring states for assistance.

The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new. It's not change, and it's not hope.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster - closed and forgotten within the first year.

I attended a very small junior high and specially in the end that became a disaster. The principal was pretty senile and a drunk, so the children more or less runned the school.

If I could learn to treat triumph and disaster the same, then I would find bliss.

There are no quick fixes to Indigenous poverty and social disaster.

The word survivor suggests someone who has emerged alive from a plane crash or a natural disaster. But the word can also refer to the loved ones of murder victims, and this was the sense in which it was used at a four-day conference in early June at Boston College.

Homeowners and business owners across the country agreed to pay premiums, communities agreed to adopt building codes to mitigate flood dangers, and the Federal Government agreed to provide insurance coverage to policyholders after a disaster.

We pray that every field of science may contribute in bringing happiness - not disaster - to human beings.

There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep.

First, those images help us understand the general and specific magnitude of disaster caused by the tsunami. The huge outpouring of aid would not have happened without those images.

The war on Iraq was a disaster, clearly carried out under false pretences.

Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.

Pride and excess bring disaster for man.

Technology without hatred can be a blessing. Technology with hatred is always a disaster.

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

He taught me never to smile, which helps me when I visit disaster sites.

It never occurred to me that we would have as grandiose a program as the Marshall Plan, but I felt that we had to do something to save Europe from economic disaster which would encourage the Communist takeover.

Turning the Internet over to the U.N. or some other phony international organization would be a disaster, and I am not willing to stand by and let it happen.