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

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

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

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

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.

First we pre-visualized it [the flying fish scene in 'Life of Pi'] so the actors could act. It took a long time to get that to come to life and to design those coming out of the screen. We had great fun with that. It takes a long time, a year maybe.

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