Quotes

"Making a martial arts film in English to me is the same as John Wayne speaking Chinese in a western".

It could be the hidden side of you; I think making movies is a great way to release that. I think it is important to be honest with that, and have fun with it.

There's a private feeling to the movie, an intimate feeling. I think eventually everybody has a Brokeback Mountain (2005) in them. Someone you want to come back to. And, of course, some people don't come back.

American films are less American every day, because you have to please a world audience. There's less authenticity, so it's more accessible.

On the receiving side, I think the whole world is more ready, with the Internet, with film festivals and DVDs. It used to be a one-way street from West to East: we were receiving and the West was producing. I think we're getting closer and closer. The gap between cultures is getting erased every day.

I'm experienced enough to know that the hardest thing to tell is an epic short story; slices of life that add up to an epic feeling.

Everywhere can be home and everywhere is not really home and you have to deal with loneliness and alienation. I'm old enough to realize that eventually you have to deal with loneliness, anyway. I'm happily married, I love my children, but eventually you have to deal with yourself. I trust the elusive world created by movies more than anything else. I'm very happy when I'm making a movie.

Nothing stands still. That's important in my movies. People want to believe in something, want to hang on to something to get security and want to trust each other. But things change. Given enough time, nothing stands still. I think seeking for security and lack of security is another thing in my movies.

Every movie I make. That's my hideout, the place I don't quite understand, but feel most at home.

My father's family were liquidated during the Cultural Revolution in China because they were landowners. He was the only one to escape. I was born and brought up in Taiwan. But you absorb the trauma. My parents had no sense of security. It was as if the world could turn against them at any moment.

I think I find something new in each culture after being away for a bit, and that's creatively important. You can't move forward without changing, and that's why I try to stay open to new perspectives. I want to keep learning. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can never learn enough.

I think you look like a fool as a director when you talk too much about what the actors are doing. You want them to listen to you, but personally speaking, I don't want them to just follow everything I say without processing it. This is a problem for Asian actors. They are so polite, and they've been trained to smile and nod and agree with everything someone in power tells them. I'm not looking for conflict, but I'm not happy if someone is repressing their feelings either.

I was never romantic in real life. That is why I have to make movies about it.

I'm a drifter and an outsider. There's not one single environment I can totally belong to. My cultural roots are something illusive.

Working with Heath was one of the purest joys of my life. He brought to the role of Ennis more than any of us could have imagined - a thirst for life, for love, and for truth, and a vulnerability that made everyone who knew him love him. His death is heartbreaking. - Mourning actor Heath Ledger.

[on casting Winston Chao in The Wedding Banquet (1993)]: It's hard to find a good actor who is charming, speaks English and Mandarin Chinese, and doesn't mind portraying a gay character. - (New York Magazine, August 2, 1993)

Sometimes I feel illusions are more of life's essence. I can trust them more that real life that is full of deceit and covering-up.

I am not particularly religious. But I think we do face the questions of where God is, why we are created. where does life go, and why we exist. That sort of thing. Call it illusion or call it faith. Whatever you call it we have attachment to the unknown.

[on Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)] Our head is still in the film world. Not to put down film in the past, because it's brilliant, I love it. But if we do digital, we ought to do something different, it shouldn't be imitating something else. [2016]

Before I made Hulk (2003), there was no comic book-genre. I borrowed from '70s Italian horror films and mixed a little science-fiction, plus action, and made a psychodrama. Unfortunately, right before it there was a movie called Spider-Man (2002), which established the genre - and my movie wasn't it. Hulk was very ambitious. If you take some of the best CGI shots, they're as good as any movie now, but it's uneven.