“If mortals wait until the gods remake the world to their liking to be happy, they are already in hell.”

prophecies do not alter fate, only confirm it.

What harm is there in dreaming, if it eases pain? What good is reality, if it blots out hope? Can a man’s mind be washed without bleaching his soul?

to ask for anything of consequence from friends who cannot refuse is uncivilized.

Principles have a way of yielding to power.

The young see what they wish to see. The old see what they do not wish.

you must not use wood to put out the fire.

Like most Chinese, I am basically a fatalist – too sophisticated for religion and too superstitious to deny the gods.

Textbook survival tells you to stay put. Stop. Wait for rescue. Don’t take any risks. But there’d been a whole host of survival shows like that and I didn’t really want to do that.

Wait not while your foe fits arrow to bowstring when you can send your own arrow into him.

I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.

Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.

The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.

She put her hand in his, and he clasped it firmly, knowing he had been waiting for her all his life.

I guess in society there’s no place for women in their older thirties. We’re supposed to go sit on a shelf at some point… and wait.

My father used to describe how he’d love going, early in the morning, out on a location and waiting for the trucks to arrive and the circus to come to town. That’s what it’s like, every day, when you’re making a film. It’s the magic.