Directing, I get all kinds of inspiration. It's working with people. It's a lot more fun.
- Ang Lee Quote

I basically made the movie from the crew's suggestions. For one scene, I wanted some kids' toys against the wall in Mikey's room, to give the scene texture, and we tried a field hockey stick. It looked really good to me, until someone had to say that in America, field hockey is more of a girl's game. Gradually I got tuned into the world -- that happens on every movie.
- Ang Lee Quote (Salon, about "The Ice Storm")

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 Quote

I like to go back to Chinese film-making from time to time. I don't think I can make Chinese films back to back; it's such a big effort. I'd have to take a very long break. 
- Ang Lee Quote (BBC Movies, about Lust, Caution)

I think people are universal.
- Ang Lee Quote

I think the American West really attracts me because it's romantic. The desert, the empty space, the drama.
- Ang Lee Quote

I took the name Green Destiny from - well there is such a sword called Green Destiny. It is green because you keep twisting it, it's an ancient skill, you keep twisting it and knocking it and twisting it until it is very elastic and light.
- Ang Lee Quote

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 Quote

"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 Quote (New Statesman, about his father, January 2008)

"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. I guess this makes it easier for me in a dramatic situation to identify more with women than with men. I'm not macho, I'm not a Mel Gibson sort of person."
- Ang Lee Quote  (New Statesman, about "Lust, Caution", January 2008)


In the past I've made movies that were pretty universally liked. You can't really hate them. You can discard them, but you can't really hate them.
- Ang Lee Quote

Making this movie as a period piece about a period that was very recent in people's minds. I was in Taiwan [during the 1970s], so I hope I did all right. Otherwise, it could be the biggest embarrassment of my life. Also, the story is not linear, it's patchy, like a cubist painting, and there is always the possibility it will not hold together, it will fall apart. The tone is part satire, part serious drama, part tragedy, all mixed together, and it has to hit an emotional core. That's also very scary. 
- Ang Lee Quote (Salon, about "The Ice Storm")

My first instinct was to cast as close to the short story as possible, but then I realized that I needed actors who could go for it and that they had to function well as a couple in a love story.
- Ang Lee Quote

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 Quote

Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.
- Ang Lee Quote

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.
- Ang Lee Quote

Sexuality is a big issue, but there are others - how much you commit to a relationship, to social obligation, to honesty and being honest with yourself.
- Ang Lee Quote

Sometimes films ignore other points of view because it's simpler to tell the story that way, but the more genuine and sympathetic you are to different points of view and situations, the more real the story is.
- Ang Lee Quote

The way I go about a lovemaking scene is that we will talk about it during the rehearsing time.
- Ang Lee Quote

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 Quote

When I have a full schedule like that, I don't see myself sitting there for a couple of months, doing the research, going through a painful process, it's just not my thing anymore.
- Ang Lee Quote

When I see something I like, that's all that counts. What they use, how they get there, I never bother them.
- Ang Lee Quote

When I sent those scripts, that was the lowest point of my life. We'd just had our second son, and when I went to collect them from hospital, I went to the bank to try and get some money to buy some diapers, the screen showed I've got $26 left.
- Ang Lee Quote

When there is a strong woman character in a story - that always grabs me.
- Ang Lee Quote