Wong Kar-wai

“My films are never about what Hong Kong is like, or anything approaching a realistic portrait, but what I think about Hong Kong and what I want it to be.”

“When you look at martial arts films, the later ones became more and more exaggerated. It's like, wow, is martial arts only a show?”

“1936 is a very important year: a golden time for martial arts, right before the Japanese invasion.”

“To make a film like 'The Grandmaster,' I know I'm not going to make just a standard kung-fu film; it's not going to be just tricks or like wire works. So I spent seven years on the road interviewing different schools and a lot of real grandmasters from Chinese martial arts.”

“I came to Hong Kong when I was five, but we didn't have any relatives in Hong Kong. My mom is a big movie fan, and she watched all kinds of movies, so when I was a kid, basically, we went to watch a movie every day.”

“In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.”

“Heritage is something martial-arts films don't often talk about.”

“One's memories aren't what actually happened - they're very subjective. You can always make it much better, right?”

“Americans always see China through the looking glass, and I think it's about time - with technology and of the growing economic relationship between these two countries - I think it's natural and better for all of us to have a better understanding of each other.”

“I think of action as a dance. It's a riddle; it should have emotion in it.”

“I didn't know anything about martial arts. I'm a big fan, but I never practiced martial arts.”

“Somehow, we fall in love with the films and don't want to let go, but financially and physically, we cannot afford it.”

“What's so great about inspiration is sometimes it finds you when you're not looking.”

“I was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong the year I was five.”

“My mother has a very big family in Shanghai, so I have, like, almost 40 cousins, so we stayed together all the time. So by the time I get to Hong Kong, I become the only child and the only one surrounded by adults, you know.”

“What makes international cinema so interesting is that each territory has its own sensibility. When you look at an Indian or French film, there's a certain flavor. And even though the language is different, if the film is successful, it has something very common and understandable.”

“To make films, it always begins with two words: what and how. First of all, you have to find a story, or what are you going to tell? And you have to find a way to tell it visually.”