“All cultures have been mingled forever.”

Small things start us in new ways of thinking.

If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.

The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men.

If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don’t express your disregard for the essence of the culture. It’s a form of aggression.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Life doesn’t have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

One must always try to see the truth of a situation – it makes things universal.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts. That’s where everything starts unravelling.

In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.

Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.

It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’.

And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over.

People come and go all the time; the world has always been in movement.

I will say I am the sum of my books.

It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.

We live in a culture full of hares; but the tortoise always wins.

My wife wanted my children to have some Chinese culture and education. She believes the children need to learn two languages and two cultures.

I found it to be kind of ironic, because I’m white, therefore I’m appropriating culture, but then Eminem won it – who’s white and won it many times – and they didn’t seem to say anything about that. I suspect it was just because they dislike me.

Get the culture right, and everything else just falls into place.

The best armor against everything around you is to be well educated, to work hard, to be twice as good as if you had to be, to do languages and culture better.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.

It’s very important not to do what your peers think you should do, not do what your parents think,your teachers or even your culture. Do what’s inside of you.

What’s the best way to build a brand for the long term? In a word: culture.