“Very difficult to understand American audience, what they like, what they don’t like. Some movie I like very much, it doesn’t work. Some movie I don’t like, it gets big box office. Very difficult.”

Martial arts is not for hurting people, it’s for protecting people.

I really hope someday in Hollywood, some producer or director will hire me only to do drama.

Pain is my daily routine. As long as I don’t go to the hospital, it’s nothing for me.

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’ That’s when I get crazy.

When life knocks you down, you can choose to get back up.

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

As one tale ends, so another begins.

Bruce Lee brought the martial arts movie to the attention of the world – and without him, I don’t think that anyone would have ever heard of Jackie Chan.

We live now in a global village and we are in one single family. It’s our responsibility to bring friendship and love from all different places around the world and to live together in peace.

If one does not attach himself to people and desires, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

I want to really stress this, I am a director, an actor, producer, action choreographer, and I’m also an investor.

I want to make people laugh and I want to try to encourage world peace.

Sometimes it takes only one act of kindness and caring to change a person’s life.

Life will knock us down, but we can choose whether or not to stand back up.

Officials of governments that use or produce landmines should be forced to see the reality of how landmines hurt people and make them suffer, because this would surely make them stop.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn’t had an audience, and lines to speak?

Honestly I think it was gradual from the first time I came. It’s been a gradual thing as far as audience and response wise. I feel like I was conditioned for this type of impact.

I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film [Close Up]. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience.

I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks.

Being onstage is just a feeling that you cannot duplicate anywhere else because the energy that the audience is giving you forces you to give more energy. It’s such an output and exchange of energy. You can’t do that anywhere else.

As an audience member, I like the sound of something that’s been written – I like it to sound written. And then, of course, you can’t do it without the musicians who can play it.

Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.

The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.