Shannon Lee

“I started studying Jeet Kune Do in my early 20s.”

“The tenets of Jeet Kune Do are simplicity, directness, and freedom, and it's meant to be a style that is efficient and non-telegraphic; you can't see it coming.”

“I always thought that a film about how my father's life was shaped in his early years in Hong Kong would be a worthwhile story to share so we could better understand him as a human being and a warrior.”

“I've had people hang around me because I'm Bruce Lee's daughter, and it's kind of a blow. You start to ask yourself, 'Who am I?', 'What's valuable about me?', 'Is what's valuable about me that I'm Bruce Lee's daughter?'”

“At the movies, when I see Sandra Bullock or Winona Ryder, I think, 'I can do that!'”

“My father chose the yellow-and-black tracksuit that he wore in 'Game of Death' to represent his idea of 'the style of no style.'”

“I've dedicated a lot of my life to running the Bruce Lee businesses and continuing his legacy. Some people say I'm doing that to make money or to emulate him. That couldn't be further from the truth; I do it because I'm inspired by his message.”

“When I have struggled with things like being Bruce Lee's daughter, it's his words that have guided me: his words that said that I just need to have faith in myself, believe in myself, and express myself.”

“I will say that my father loved to teach and was a very gifted teacher. He probably would have been an excellent coach and trainer.”

“In my 20s, when I was acting, I probably had a little bit of a personality crisis in the sense that everybody related to me as Bruce Lee's daughter.”

“I think, when people hear the word 'philosophy,' they think of Plato and a bunch of people sitting around in their robes pontificating about life and how it should be. But really, somebody who is an active philosopher should not only be thinking of these things but putting them into practice.”

“There have been projects out there involving my father, but they've lacked a complete understanding of his philosophies and artistry. They haven't captured the essence of his beliefs in martial arts or storytelling. The only way to get audiences to understand the depth and uniqueness of my father is to generate our own material.”

“My father was up against so many different types of resistance. His whole life was an interplay of East and West. He was born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, which was under British rule then.”

“My father was prolific when it came to writing: day-timers, journals. He wrote on pieces of loose-leaf paper that he held on to, and he wrote in spiral notebooks.”

“You have no idea how many bags of money I've had to turn down. But if something doesn't match up with our goals - if it's too violent, or even if it's just too boring - my father may have been a philosopher, but he was always an entertainer - we're not going to take the money.”

“It is much easier to imitate something else that you know is accepted and loved than it is to look inside and follow your own compass, because you have no idea if you'll be accepted, if you'll be right, if your ideas are good, if your way is a path to success.”

“Being Bruce Lee's kid, everyone wants you to be an action-film star. I took martial arts, and it's fun to do those types of movies, but I wanted to act, not fight.”

“The thing that my father was absolutely brilliant at doing was being Bruce Lee. Nobody was able to do what he did or be like he was.”

“I have a degree in vocal performance, I'm a classically trained singer, and I studied musical theatre.”

“Certainly, there are very few wholly original ideas in the world; there are usually people coming to the same conclusions or carrying out experiments, whether publicly or privately.”