Quotes from Ang Lee

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

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

The thing we call critics are not really reviewers, they are not really critics. They don't have the discipline to write what we would term as critique - it's really just reviewers. They have a common man kind of taste. If you watch them overall, they are not different from the box-office. That's my view.

I had to test a new terror in myself.

I feel like all of my characters now take this congested situation, they clash, and from there you purge yourself.

Emotions serve characters' purposes. That is their motivation.

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

I think the book struck me in a few ways that I thought very interesting to pick it as my first martial arts film. It has a very strong female character and it was very abundant in classic Chinese textures.

I think great romance needs great obstacles and textures.

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

I'm aware of what's missing from my life.

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

I guess in Hollywood you chart your life by Oscars. You say to each other, "Remember when that movie won that year? It was 2006. Remember that?"

On a Chinese film you just give orders, no one questions you. Here, you have to convince people, you have to tell them why you want to do it a certain way, and they argue with you. Democracy.

I did a women's movie, and I'm not a woman. I did a gay movie, and I'm not gay. I learned as I went along.

I don't know if I make the best gay films.

Everyone in the gay community doesn't think alike.

I'm not macho, I'm not a Mel Gibson sort of person.

Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done.

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.

For a filmmaker, it's a rare chance to do a personal film on a big canvas.

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.

To me, Ennis stands for the conservative side of America. He's the biggest homophobe in the whole movie - culturally and psychologically - but by the time he admits his feelings, it's too late.

So I'm a one movie at a time person, I don't develop. Normally we do a movie then one thing leads to another. If something pops up that catches my attention, then I'll decide.