Wong Kar-wai Quotations

Each production has certain circumstances that will bring you to a certain way of making it. It is not intentional, it is not an artistic decision, the way we make films, it is the way we address to our problems.

I was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong the year I was five.

I didn't know anything about martial arts. I'm a big fan, but I never practiced martial arts.

'Ashes of Time' was my third film, and as a young director at that point, it's not very often that you have the chance to make a big martial arts film, so of course I jumped at this opportunity.

I came to Hong Kong when I was five, but we didn't have any relatives in Hong Kong. My mom is a big movie fan, and she watched all kinds of movies, so when I was a kid, basically, we went to watch a movie every day.

Heritage is something martial-arts films don't often talk about.

I'm not very aware of styles. We never talk about styles before we start shooting, or even during shooting, because I think the film will bring you there.

During shooting, you have the idea, like, of this certain dress on this actress, but it's not to fit, so you have to make all of these alterations and modifications. So in a way, I build the characters with the cast, and it's sort of custom-made, the whole process, and then you have to make all of these adjustments.

Sometimes, when you're on the streets, certain music inspires you, and then you have a vision. But, at the end of the day, it's a synthesis of visions, so you have to think, as a director, of a scene, or how to deliver a line, or how do this visually.

In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.