Top 100 Ang Lee Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I don’t have incredible knowledge about films or of filmmaking history; I’m not that kind of person.”

— Ang Lee

52. “If the movie is quiet I generally feel the audience is busy. That’s when they’re working.”

— Ang Lee

53. “I think doing period piece is easier, because after a certain distance, everybody is equal, I think. The relative contemporary is harder. I think that’s the way it is.”

— Ang Lee

54. “I don’t have a checklist. Whatever material excites me, they’ll call for a certain genre or combination of genres. It’ll come naturally and I’ll be eager to learn how that thing works. I learn the rules, and I’ll probably break some of them.”

— Ang Lee

55. “In Taiwan, I’d be like Michael Jordan walking down the street.”

— Ang Lee

56. “If there’s something that can be formulated, regulated, give you security, then nobody would lose money. Every movie would be successful. And that’s certainly not the case.”

— Ang Lee

57. “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.”

— Ang Lee

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

— Ang Lee

59. “It’s not a pleasure torturing actors, although some of them enjoy it.”

— Ang Lee

60. “I don’t care about writing really.”

— Ang Lee

61. “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?’”

— Ang Lee

62. “The way I go about a lovemaking scene is that we will talk about it during the rehearsing time.”

— Ang Lee

63. “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.”

— Ang Lee

64. “Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn’t a hit, you shouldn’t view it as a mistake.”

— Ang Lee

65. “In my culture, there’s a tradition that when you’re in an overwhelming situation and you don’t know what to do, you put yourself in a woman’s shoes.”

— Ang Lee

66. “I think great romance needs great obstacles and textures.”

— Ang Lee

67. “Depending on the budget. I think I prefer 3D to 2D now. Also, because of 3D I have to use a digital camera, which is the way it’s going anyway. That still confuses me, a digital camera versus film.”

— Ang Lee

68. “I’m just a pretty regular dad.”

— Ang Lee

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

— Ang Lee

70. “If it was a choice between making movies and doing nothing, he’d probably still wish me to make movies, So he made me keep going.”

— Ang Lee

71. “When I see something I like, that’s all that counts. What they use, how they get there, I never bother them.”

— Ang Lee

72. “Not taboo – it’s just that straight actors still risk their careers commercially and economically. They have to please the crowd – they’re movie stars; their image is their industry. It goes beyond acting.”

— Ang Lee

73. “There’s only one movie in my career I’ve had regrets with cutting it shorter, and I think some scenes maybe I shouldn’t have cut.”

— Ang Lee

74. “Directing, I get all kinds of inspiration. It’s working with people. It’s a lot more fun.”

— Ang Lee

75. “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.”

— Ang Lee

76. “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.”

— Ang Lee

77. “I think, if allowed, 3D is a new film language. I can have more adventure exploring a new media, that’s very exciting. 2D we know most of it, things haven’t changed for decades; it’s the same principles, so 3D’s more exciting.”

— Ang Lee

78. “I had to find my way of translating the excitement you get when you’re reading comic books to the big screen.”

— Ang Lee

79. “First we pre-visualized it so the actors could act. It took a long time to get that to come to life and to design those coming out of the screen. We had great fun with that. It takes a long time, a year maybe.”

— Ang Lee

80. “I am not particularly religious. But I think we do face the question of where God is, why we are created and where does life go, why we exist. That sort of thing. And it is very hard to talk about it these days, because it cannot be proven. It is hard to discuss it rationally.”

— Ang Lee

81. “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.”

— Ang Lee

82. “I think people are universal.”

— Ang Lee

83. “You become the movie you are making.”

— Ang Lee

84. “You can get rich or famous by doing the same thing.”

— Ang Lee

85. “I look at American movies, the big muscles, and try to apply that to Chinese film-making.”

— Ang Lee

86. “There’s a level of sophistication of filmmaking that’s mind-boggling. Anything you need for your movie, there’s an establishment that can make it happen really fast.”

— Ang Lee

87. “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.”

— Ang Lee

88. “My mother loves me and everything goes well. I have no conflict with her, so that’s not dramatic.”

— Ang Lee

89. “Everyone in the gay community doesn’t think alike.”

— Ang Lee

90. “I think that at heart I am an old-fashioned Chinese, really I am.”

— Ang Lee

91. “I just did a dramatic love story. Whether it’s a cultural phenomenon is not for me to say.”

— Ang Lee

92. “I’m not a master of films. I’m rather a slave.”

— Ang Lee

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

— Ang Lee

94. “My father was the center of the family, and everyone tried to please him.”

— Ang Lee

95. “I have two sons in America, and all they care about in Chinese culture is Jackie Chan and Jet Li.”

— Ang Lee

96. “After making several tragic movies in a row, I was looking to do a comedy, and one without cynicism.”

— Ang Lee

97. “What is really a stretch to me is to make quick decisions.”

— Ang Lee

98. “Summer blockbusters are very expensive to make. They have things that have to be expensive, such as 600 effects shots or CG characters that have to go a certain way, or a film design that is different but expensive.”

— Ang Lee

99. “Every movie is unknown.”

— Ang Lee

100. “When I started out, nobody gave me scripts, so I had to write.”

— Ang Lee