“The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.”

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.

I mean they don’t seem able to love us just the way we are. They don’t seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more.

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.

How long should a man’s legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.

I’m one of the little foxes that spoil the grapes.

I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

I just hope that one day – preferably when we’re both blind drunk – we can talk about it.

Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.

An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.

Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.

People always clap for the wrong reasons.

I love to write and I assure you I write regularly. But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

I don’t think in art there is ever a precedent; each moment is a new one and terrifying and threatening and bursting with hope.

You can use martial arts to tell a different story. Ang Lee used martial arts in ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ to talk about love.

Each body has its art.

If you trusted that your art was going to support your life, how would you live?

Usually action films have a formula: good guy gets in trouble, his wife dies, friends have problems, so he goes to the mountain, learns martial arts, comes back, and kills the bad guy.

The incredible brand awareness and bottom-line profits achievable through social media marketing require hustle, heart, sincerity, constant engagement, long-term commitment, and most of all, artful and strategic storytelling.

I think every young child can learn through any martial art. They would then learn to respect their life, respect their parents, respect their country, and respect the whole world.

I wrote in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after. After is better.