Quotes from Wong Kar-wai

The reason it takes me so long to make a film, the reason it gets so difficult, is that I'm trying to think of every film as the last one I will ever make so it can be the best it can possibly be. I don't want to have regrets or excuses or think, 'I can do better next time.'

It is always good to work with a very regular group of people because we know how high we can fly and what are the parameters, and it becomes very enjoyable.

After the Revolution in '49, all the films were propaganda. They serviced the government and carried the message that the government wants to relay to the people. But I think, in the last 10 years, because the film market is opening and there's an expansion of all the cinemas in China, it's now a lot like Hollywood productions.

In our case, we have no script. So the only people we can work with are people who have been working with us in the past, and they know we are going to do something; it's kind of a trust.

When you look at martial arts films, the later ones became more and more exaggerated. It's like, wow, is martial arts only a show?

What's so great about inspiration is sometimes it finds you when you're not looking.

To make a film like 'The Grandmaster,' I know I'm not going to make just a standard kung-fu film; it's not going to be just tricks or like wire works. So I spent seven years on the road interviewing different schools and a lot of real grandmasters from Chinese martial arts.

Some actors like encouragement. Some actors prefer to have pressure. And sometimes, for some actors, its better to give your comment by silence, because they are so skillful, so gifted, that they understand without talking too much.

1936 is a very important year: a golden time for martial arts, right before the Japanese invasion.

I was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong the year I was five.

When I look at 'Fallen Angels,' I realize it is not a film that is truly about Hong Kong. It's more like my Hong Kong fantasy. I want Hong Kong to be quiet, with less people.

I am just the band leader, and I just keep everything in tune.

I don't do rehearsal. Some directors prefer to do rehearsal - readings before the actual shooting - but I don't like this process because I think there are certain things that are so spontaneous, and they cannot happen twice.

To me, romantic means, um, you follow your heart more than your mind. Sometimes when you're shooting a film, you have to follow your heart.

I think one day I can make a book about coffee shops in Hong Kong. I spent almost most of my time in coffee shops, in different coffee shops.

What makes international cinema so interesting is that each territory has its own sensibility. When you look at an Indian or French film, there's a certain flavor. And even though the language is different, if the film is successful, it has something very common and understandable.

In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.

I never had a problem with genre because a genre actually is like a uniform - you put yourself into a certain uniform. But if you dress up in a police officer's uniform, it doesn't mean that you are an officer; it can mean something else.

When it's time to let go, I don't look back, and I start another project as soon as possible. One thing I remind myself is that I don't want to Photoshop my past.

I started out my career as a screenwriter and quickly discovered that adhering to a script isn't always the best way to make a film. You have to take into consideration the nuances of the characters and what the actors bring to their roles.

It used to be when you eat, you eat with people. But instant noodles are so instant that people eat by themselves. And it's a very convenient way of eating but also a very lonely way of eating.

In most kung fu films, they want to create a hero who's always fighting a bad guy. In the story of Ip Man, he's not fighting physical opponents. He's fighting the ups and downs of his life.

In much the same way Ip Man embodied the struggles of the Chinese people, I wanted Gong Er to represent the changing role of women.

The laboratory where we stored all our negatives went bankrupt overnight following the Asian economic crisis in 1997. So, on short notice, we had to retrieve all the materials in the middle of the night before the debtor-receiver took over the laboratory the next morning.