Quotes from Michelle Yeoh

There is so much we can do to save lives on our roads.

We always see Aung San as a strong, tough woman. There are two stories running in parallel. You see the contradictions between the East and the West, and you see someone who does mundane and normal things - someone who's supposed to be a housewife - and then someone who's become important and imprisoned.

Some of the martial arts films, the motivation is about martial arts. That's where it's coming from. It is a visual, commercial film, to showcase the next stunt, the biggest thing. And character development becomes a side thing.

When a movie becomes very successful, it's automatic that people will start thinking a sequel, a prequel, a quel-quel.

Sometimes, being a girl away from home - it gets to you.

If you were ever a ballerina, you know the pain: just to be able to look like it's all so light, but when they take off their shoes, it's all bloody.

Beauty shouldn't be superficial and should come from within, and your eyes will tell the story.

To be a geisha, you have to have to an iron-clad layer around you - around your physical body and your heart.

In many ways, I feel I'm still as physically fit as I was 20 years ago because I've always been athletic.

I did ballet, piano and all that - my brother did martial arts, my passion.

Martial arts is something you can learn or pick up and think you could do really well.

As a producer, what you want to do is make the next hit. But you also want to lead the audience into wanting to watch different movies. You have to vary your content.

I was struck by Suu Kyi's warmth and generosity. No matter how petite she looks, she exudes amazing strength. More than anything else, I felt like I already knew her, like she was an old friend, because I'd been watching her so intently, and she was exactly what I had figured she would be.

Movies cater to what the audiences want.

I think that learning Burmese has to have been one of the most challenging things that I have had to do for a movie.

I have very supportive parents who said, 'Go and do what you want to do. Home is always here for you, and if you don't like it out there, come back. You can always do something different.' So when you have an option like that, you are able to choose roles or choose the things you want to be in.

I kick and punch quite hard, and it surprises people.

The most important thing is that you have really good friends and family, and when you go back to them, it's like 'what?'. You carry on as who you are.

As an actor, you hope to find roles that are challenging to you as an artist. Then if you are truly blessed, you will find that it also carries a message that you can impart to your audience.

We have to make movies where we do not think this is for the American market or this is for the Chinese market. We have to make a good movie that anyone would just want to sit down and watch because love, language, culture transcend everything.

My mother is a very big cinema buff, so as a kid, we watched a lot of Indian and Malay films.

I grew up in Malaysia, and Bollywood is really big there. As a result, I've grown up watching a lot of Hindi movies.

I don't plan to go out and do action or not do action.

I love my martial arts and action movies. They give another dimension to the acting world: the emotional plus the physical.