Chinese Martial Arts Quotes & Sayings

My father was a big Bruce Lee fan. He's Chinese-Hawaiian, and my mother is Chinese. He used to take us to all these really fantastical films with martial arts in them. And Bruce Lee was amazing. — Jason Scott Lee

Growing up as a kid, I wanted to be a ninja. In martial arts, even though I did Chinese kung fu, I always wanted to be this secret samurai or a ninja. There's something about ninjas that was very appealing to me as a kid. So of course, I was climbing a lot of trees and other things and getting up to mischief - good mischief. — Ray Park

I think the book struck me in a few ways that I thought very interesting to pick it as my first martial arts film. It has a very strong female character and it was very abundant in classic Chinese textures. — Ang Lee

I don't mind doing action or kung fu, but I'm also really happy to do something dramatic. I'd like to show that a Chinese girl doesn't have to do crazy martial arts to get the part. — Zhu Zhu

Jackie Chan is a very good comedy/martial arts star. He does one kind of martial arts that Jet Li doesn't know how to do and Jet Li does a martial art that Jackie Chan doesn't know how to do. You can both go to two Chinese restaurants, but both can have different kinds of food. — Jet Li

A lot of Chinese martial arts films were based on Chinese martial arts novels. And these novels created a world of putting history, calligraphy, and martial arts into one. — Donnie Yen

Zhang Yimou tried to use martial arts to talk about Chinese culture, Chinese people. What do they think, what do they want and what do they hope. — Jet Li

When you are the only laowai in a village of 10,000 Chinese martial artists and you've sat through several dozen films where a white man shouts, "You Chinese dog," before getting his ass kicked, it starts to irritate you. We all need role models. — Matthew Polly

I think Ang Lee is a very, very talented director. He used martial arts to talk about love and girl, you know ... But Zhang Yimou tried to use martial arts film to talk about Chinese culture, Chinese people. What do they think, what do they want and what do they hope the world will become. — Jet Li

I mean when you go to a network and say, "We want to make a martial arts series in the future." And give them the pitch. And by the way, the only way to achieve the authentic Hong Kong martial arts we need a full-time fight team unit working concurrently, and we're hiring a Chinese fight team from Hong Kong. And they were like, "Great, let's go." — Alfred Gough

Making a martial arts film in English to me is the same as John Wayne speaking Chinese in a western — Ang Lee