Ang Lee

“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.”

“Emotions serve characters' purposes. That is their motivation.”

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

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

“Film study was considered disgraceful by my father.”

“I try to please everyone.”

“Usually with this genre the first thing that happens is a good fight sequence to show that you're in good hands. So we broke that rule. I think a lot of that comes from the western audience.”

“These days I'm mostly familiar with two parts of L.A.: one is movie culture, and the other is Asian culture. The Westside is work, and the Eastside is Chinese - which means my friends.”

“I think life without spirit is in the dark, it is absurd.”

“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.”

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

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

“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 hate to think life is just facts and laws.”

“My cultural roots are something illusive.”

“I think a movie is a media that is evoking feelings.”

“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.”

“The father figure is something I love, but also suffocate from and want to work against.”