“Immortality is to live your life doing good things, and leaving your mark behind.”

For me, the martial arts is a search for something inside. It’s not just a physical discipline.

For what level of mediocrity will you settle?

There’s sort of a theory that’s going around in the China-watching community about a perfect storm coming up with the 2008 Olympics, a U.S. election and a Taiwanese election, some sort of mutually reinforcing explosion and crisis.

I’ve made six films since I made Secrets and Lies but I still live in London and I’d love to do theater.

My mother is very wise and intelligent. If I have children and can do half as good a job as she did in keeping me in line, I’ll be very happy.

Believe me, nothing is trivial.

Immortality is a by-product of good work.

Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.

The exploding star of A.D. 1054, the Crab Nebula, was sighted and documented by the Chinese, but nowhere mentioned in the West, where the Aristotelian notion of the immortality of stars still held sway.

Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].

I believe we lose immortality because we have not conquered our opposition to death;

They think they’ll find another way. I’m not so sure. It seems like her book views immortality as a dangerous desire.

Not everyone wants to live forever, but every culture has always desired immortality in one way or another.

The only greatness for man is immortality.