Ang Lee Quotes

At times I can't help going for visual comfort. Sometimes a picture fills up your head, and you try to move the actors around to make that visual statement.

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

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

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

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'm just a pretty regular dad.

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

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 don't have a checklist. Whatever material excites me, they'll call for a certain genre or combination of genres. It'll come naturally and I'll be eager to learn how that thing works. I learn the rules, and I'll probably break some of them.

I think it[3D] should be used as a new artistic form, not as a gimmick, not to impress you but the existence of an environment that you view as a theatrical dramatic experience is - you don't just have the X-Y axis, you have the Z and that makes a difference. You still have the framing, you still use lenses, so most of the cinematic rules and languages still apply but I think it's a different existence.

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.

So I'm a one movie at a time person, I don't develop. Normally we do a movie then one thing leads to another. If something pops up that catches my attention, then I'll decide.

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

I think for most people, the audience probably couldn't tell the difference, but I know they [shots of visual effects] can be better. And the people working know they can be more precise. I'm still doing another round of sound mixing and color timing, pretty technical stuff. I think the movie [Life of Pi] is really presentable, nothing was left out that would take you out of the movie. I just need to perfect the job and I still have two weeks to go [to deliver final cut to Fox].

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.

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.

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

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

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.

A lot of people will think I changed the book: ‘so you’re the tiger instead, you’re the tiger who ate the cook.’ That’d be totally expository, like in the book, ‘you’re the tiger’ and then it stops there. That seems to have the magic touch. I bring everything together. That’s why he made up the story, the whole thing becomes internalized. That might be the magic, but all I did is not so much interpreted, but try my best to keep everybody still staying in the movie. And I was like, ‘God, it’s so hard to do.’ I make movies for a long time. It doesn't get easier.

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.

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

There's a certain time in the core of making a movie from pre-production to halfway through post-production I don't read any project, my agent will tell people that "he's not reading." And then when I know how the movie's probably gonna work halfway into post-production, I'll come along.

I just did a dramatic love story. Whether it's a cultural phenomenon is not for me to say.

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

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?"

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.

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.

Only one time in my career I had that feeling [that this is not gonna get made], it was for this movie [Life of Pi]. It was right before we started the physical pre-production. I pre-visualized the whole ocean part before we made the movie, I was that prepared. At one point they seemed to want to drop it because it was really risky. The budget we proposed was a lot higher than they expected, they wanted to [drop it]. After all, it's a philosophical book and a literature property, it's not Batman.

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

Americans are hidden dragons to me.

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

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

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 fear factor actually brings the genuineness.

I like to think I'm un-categorisable.

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

Emotions serve characters' purposes. That is their motivation.

We need storytelling. Otherwise life just goes on and on, like the number Pi.

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

I took the name Green Destiny from - well there is such a sword called Green Destiny. It is green because you keep twisting it, it's an ancient skill, you keep twisting it and knocking it and twisting it until it is very elastic and light.

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

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.

If you try to act, you're going to look like you're acting. So don't act.

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

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

I find it hard to deliver straightforward things.