Top 60 Ang Lee Quotes

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.

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.

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

I think great romance needs great obstacles and textures.

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

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.

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

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

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

I don’t have a superpower.

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.

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

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 don’t like to deal with studios.

I hate to think life is just facts and laws.

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

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

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

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

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

I do like challenge.

My cultural roots are something illusive.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The fear factor actually brings the genuineness.

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

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.

I’m such a late bloomer.

As artists, we like night more than day sometimes.

I try to please everyone.

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.

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.

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

I find it hard to deliver straightforward things.

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 had to test a new terror in myself.

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.

I think I can work with any type of actor.

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

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.

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

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

I think I prefer 3D to 2D now.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I don’t care about writing really.

My culture doesn’t regard acting highly.