Ang Lee

You become the movie you are making.

As artists, we like night more than day sometimes.

Emotions serve characters' purposes. That is their motivation.

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.

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 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 I prefer 3D to 2D now.

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

I'm such a late bloomer.

Every movie is unknown.

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

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

I'm a shy human being.

I'm just a pretty regular dad.

My cultural roots are something illusive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I find it hard to deliver straightforward things.

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

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

I'm quite lazy.

I'm not macho, I'm not a Mel Gibson sort of person.

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.

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.

Americans are hidden dragons to me.

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

I had to test a new terror in myself.

Kids don't even read comic books anymore. They've got more important things to do - like video games.

I think great romance needs great obstacles and textures.

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

Everyone in the gay community doesn't think alike.

The fear factor actually brings the genuineness.

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.

Film study was considered disgraceful by my father.

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.

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

I'm still a novice student.