Hong Quotes & Sayings

At thirteen, when I arrived in Hong Kong after leaving China, I made a living by working in a restaurant. — Martin Yan

In Hong Kong, particularly, we craft this art for decades. The action choreographer actually is the action director. He takes over and he choreographs with - by himself or with his team, and place the camera where he feels cinematic effect to bring out that choreography. — Donnie Yen

When the mind is possessed of reality, it feels tranquil and joyous even without music or song, and it produces a pure fragrance even without incense or tea. — Hong Zicheng

My job is my own only land. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Basically, Koreans are the Marlboro Men of Asia. — Euny Hong

Ten years before Matrix, ten years before Crouching Tiger - I wanted to do a Hong Kong action movie. — Robert Mark Kamen

Hong Mei shrugged. She didn't mind. Waiting to take out the crisp new bills was part of the lead-up to waht she considered the best part of the New Year. And that was when she received her own money inside the small red hong-bao. Throughout the days of celebrating, neighbours and patients of her mother would stop by and give her small envelopes with bills of cash inside. Just the sight of one of the little packets could make her heart race. Although she was already a teenager, girls were given hong-bao until they got married, and she was a long way from that. — B.L. Sauder

When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Soil with a lot of manure in it produces abundant crops; water that is too clear has no fish. Therefore, enlightened people should maintain the capacity to accept impurities and should not be solitary perfectionists. — Zicheng Hong

I put together an iPhone app called TrimIt and released that in July 2011. About a month later, the private fund of the Hong Kong billionaire Li-Kashing cold emailed me and expressed an interest to invest, but they didn't realize I was 15. They thought it was a U.K. company with a team. — Nick D'Aloisio

There can't be a pure myth, especially when the myth has been handed down in the oral tradition. As the stories are told, they change. If the stories don't change they just die. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Attention is the mind's feet; if you do not control your attention strictly, it runs into misleading pathways. — Zicheng Hong

When I hit the bong
I'm Godzilla takin' over Hong Kong
Eatin' wonton with a shotgun in long johns. — Redman

If you know that whatever is made inevitable breaks down, you needn't seek too hard for achievement. If you know that all living beings inevitably die, you needn't work too hard on health lore. — Zicheng Hong

Hong Kong has plenty of superlative hotels, amazing food, and cool shopping. — Hanya Yanagihara

The clown was an evil one. They're either good or bad, and this one was definitely the latter. — Chris Thrall

I have found things that I could have done better in 'The Woman Warrior.' But then I thought: Let the work of one's youth just stand. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you've got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it's a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way. — Anthony Bourdain

Give Hong Kong to an Artist. He can use it. It can be poetised. — Baris Gencel

I went to Hong Kong in '97 to witness the handover after graduating university, and then I was gonna backpack around Asia and then come back here and look for a job. — Daniel Wu

Faxian and Xuanzang might have been the first Chinese to travel to India, but sometimes it felt like I was the first. — Hong Mei

Sexual desire may burn like fire, but when you give a thought to when you are ill, then your excitement dies down. Fame and fortune may be sweet as candy, but when you give a thought to when you die, then their flavor is like chewing wax. Therefore, if people are usually concerned about death and illness, this can also dissolve unreal activities and develop longing for the way. — Zicheng Hong

When you're shooting that fast end to end, you wake up in a hotel and you don't know where you are. You're dreaming of Singapore, you wake up in Hong Kong. Or you just lose track. [It's] one of the reasons I'm staying in hotels that I know I've stayed in before, and they don't look like other hotels. — Anthony Bourdain

Generosity should begin lightly and deepen later, fro when it is first rich and then lessens, people forget the kindness. Authority should begin strictly and loosen up later, for if it is loose first and then strict, people will resent the severity. — Zicheng Hong

You're too young to decide to live forever. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Regardless of how successful the Fifth Generation and New Taiwan cinemas have been in the international film milieu, this (limited) recognition usually is based on two aspects: the formal or the exotic. Their works are praised as highly formally innovative (in other words, how well the have mastered the new-wave visual language of the West -- thus, our modernist language) or exotic (as revealing the mystery of an inscrutable Other). This may explain why in the United States, mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan cinemas are still perceived as a homogeneous entity called Chinese cinema, though they are products of the vastly different cultures of three geopolitically segregated regions. — Tonglin Lu

The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I am very fussy; I am very detailed; I nag a lot. So in a sense, I am like Mr. Ping. I am temperamental, I am emotional, I'm fussy, and I'm very exact. And I want people to not fail; I want them to execute - all those things Mr. Ping wants in other people. Or animals. — James Hong

Sound economic fundamentals coupled with a number of positive factors have partially offset the psychological impact of rising interest rates in Hong Kong. — Li Ka-shing

Be realistic and truthful - and tell Hong Kong businessmen honestly that they should go for long-term investments since it is unlikely money can be made in the short haul. — Zhu Rongji

The realms of good fortune and calamity in human life are all made of thoughts and imaginings. Therefore Buddhists say that the burning of desire for gain is itself a pit of fire, while drowning in greedy love is itself a bitter sea. The moment thoughts are pure, fierce flames become a pond; the moment you become aware, the boat has arrived on the further shore. If your thoughts vary at all, your world will immediately differ, so can we not be careful? — Zicheng Hong

The sickness of indulging desires can be treated, but the sickness of clinging to abstract principles is hard to treat. Obstacles presented by events and objects can be removed, but obstacles presented by social principles are hard to remove. — Zicheng Hong

The only reason Toronto is no longer the dullest city on earth is that it is no longer full of Anglo-Canadians. It is full of Hong Kong Chinese. And not a few Italians. — Joel Garreau

An image began to form in her mind. There were streets, narrow and crowded with people and vehicles. Above them flashed neon lights and blinking billboards of every colour, shape and size. Some ran up the sides of buildings, others blinked on and off in store windows. In the space above the sidewalk, higher than a double-decker bus, hung flashing neon signs in bright pink, yellow, red, blue, orange, green and white. Yes, if white could be whiter than white, it was when it was in neon, Hong Mei thought. She knew Nathan Road in Kowloon was famous for its neon lights. Were these streets of Kowloon that she was seeing it her head? — B.L. Sauder

In a time of destruction, create something. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I think I first got into acting through church. I would go to these church retreats, and they would tell us to make a skit or make a video and present it to the rest of the group. And I started doing that. And I fell in love with it. — Ki Hong Lee

There's something in life that's a curtain, and I keep trying to raise it. — Maxine Hong Kingston

If a poor house is well kept, or a poor girl well groomed, there is elegance if not beauty. If good people should come upon hard times, why should they immediately give up on themselves? — Zicheng Hong

We got to jump on, like, trampolines, learn flips, learn karate, kung fu, Hong Kong street fighting. — Jaime King

My mind is like the streets of Hong Kong. — Jaclyn Moriarty

Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill. — Maxine Hong Kingston

It does not matter whether I am in Hong Kong or Sao Paolo - people always want to talk about toxic bosses and what to do about them. — Srikumar Rao

Unexpected hardship refines people; if you can accept it, both mind and body will benefit. If you cannot accept it, on the other hand, both mind and body will be harmed. — Zicheng Hong

Think about food on a full stomach and you find you don't care about taste. Think of lust after making love, and you find you don't care about sex. Therefore, if people always reflect on the regret they will feel afterward to forestall folly at the moment, they will be stable and will not err in action. — Zicheng Hong

And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called brainwashing. — Robert Jay Lifton

My first break was in a Hong Kong movie that I shot in China - I was going out there and working as a western stunt man, if you like, but at the same time in England I was working in daytime soap stuff. Eventually I put the two together. — Scott Adkins

Even if you can't get rid of the heat, as long as you can get rid of bother with the heat, your body is always on a cool terrace. Even if you can't get rid of poverty, as long as you can get rid of the sadness of poverty, your mind always lives in a comfortable abode. — Zicheng Hong

Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I was born in Cambridge but brought up in and around Winchester, in Hampshire. I've also lived in Hong Kong and America. — Chris Geere

What are you going to do for a living? Yea, you're going to have to work because you can't be a housewife. Somebody has to marry you before you can be a housewife. And you, you are a plant. Do you know that? That's all you are if you don't talk. If you don't talk, you can't have a personality. You'll have no personality and no hair. You've got to let people know you have a personality and a brain. You think somebody is going to take care of you all your stupid life? You think you'll always have your big sister? You think somebody's going to marry you, is that it? Well you're not the type that gets dates, let alone gets married. Nobody's going to notice you. And you have to talk for interviews, speak right up in front of the boss. Don't you know that? — Maxine Hong Kingston

It's the duty of artists to volunteer to do particle counting. Don't leave creation up to the accountants. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I really feel that Hong Kong is my home, and Hong Kong is my identity as an actor. — Daniel Wu

Although Shanghai is on the sea, it long lacked the prosperity that Hong Kong enjoyed, so while Hong Kong became known for its exotic ocean creatures, Shanghai built its diet around more commonplace river and sea fish. — Evan Osnos

It's not rocket science. Hong Kong has 95% tax compliance, because it's code is only 4 pages long with a 15% flat tax. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

You have an impeccable argument if you said that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo are food capitals. They have a maximum amount of great stuff to eat in the smallest areas. — Anthony Bourdain

If you're not fascinated by Korea yet, you damn well should be. The most innovative country on earth deserves a hilarious and poignant account on the order of Euny Hong's The Birth of Korean Cool. Her phat beats got Gangnam Style and then some. — Gary Shteyngart

If Korea were a person, it would be diagnosed as a neurotic, with both an inferiority and a superiority complex. — Euny Hong

That's so different in Hong Kong when I'm using my own mother language, I can treat the line in one thousand different ways, with many different reactions. — Chow Yun-Fat

I thought I should forget Hollywood and go back to Hong Kong. I'm so lucky that finally Hollywood accepts my comedy fighting. — Jackie Chan

Price says this figure provides compelling evidence of his view. In his words, "I find the possible parallel to the case of Hong Xiuquan to be, almost by itself, proof that James' being the Lord's brother need not prove a recent historical Jesus." That is, since Hong Xiuquan was not really Jesus's brother, the same could be true of James. — Bart D. Ehrman

pull a string, a puppet moves ...

each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand --
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know ... — Charles Bukowski

I've been writing since I was 7, but before that, I was orally making stories. — Maxine Hong Kingston

He puffed out his pigeon chest and waddled across the room towards me. With his feet pointing outwards, he looked like a fat duck with a grievance. — Chris Thrall

...the thunder has sounded--but who knows where the rain's going to fall. — Hong Ying

The life expectancy in Hong Kong is among the highest in the world ... you can come to only one conclusion: we have the most environmentally friendly place for people, for executives, for Hong Kong people to live — Donald Tsang

The Chinese did not admire a bent back; goddesses and warriors stood straight. Still there must have been a marvelous freeing of beauty when a worker laid down her burden and stretched and arched. — Maxine Hong Kingston

We had been busy building up fibre infrastructure under the ground in Hong Kong and underneath the homes of people, so when we launched IPTV, it was relatively smoother sailing than in other territories. — Richard Li

At dusk the sunset is beautifully bright; at year's end the tangerines are even more fragrant. Therefore, at the end of their road, in their later years, enlightened people should be a hundred times more vital in spirit. — Zicheng Hong

Affluence isn't affluence at all. Hong Kong is the benchmark; everybody else's affluence is mere tat. Until you've experienced that perfume-washed air as polarized glass doors embrace you into a luxury hotel's plush interior, you've only had a dud replica of the real thing. — Jonathan Gash

Business and scholarship pass away with the person, but the soul is forever like new. Fame and fortune change with the generations, but the spirit is always the same. Enlightened people surely should not exchange the lasting for the ephemeral. — Zicheng Hong

Mothers who love their children take them along. — Maxine Hong Kingston

The Revolution put an end to prostitution by giving women what they wanted: a job and a room of their own. (1983: 61) — Maxine Hong Kingston

'These boat people,' says the government of Hong Kong, 'they all want to go to America.' Well, I swear I don't know why, do you? I mean, take Vietnam. Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what American did to Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone? — Linda Ellerbee

To write out the precepts again, we contend with them, and keep them; we build our humanity, and keep our humanity alive ... Thay has named the precepts 'wonderful' ... Wonderful because they can protect us, and show us how to live a joyous life, an interesting, adventurous, deep, large life, and how to be with one another, and with animals, plants, and all the Earth and universe. Wonderful because when we practice the precepts, we existentially become humane, we embody loving kindness ... Standing in the midst of burning ruins, I was glad that I knew the precepts. Though I kept their tenets imperfectly, even in aspiration I created some invisible good that could not be destroyed ... The Five Wonderful Precepts give clear and simple directions to finding that life. In devastation, I have blueprints for making home anew (90-92).
For a Future to Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts — Maxine Hong Kingston

Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies? — Maxine Hong Kingston

After one has been in a lowly position, one knows how dangerous it is to climb to a high place, Once one has been in the dark, one knows how revealing it is to go into the light. Having maintained quietude, one knows how tiring compulsive activity is. Having nurtured silence, one knows how disturbing much talk is. — Zicheng Hong

Princeton has made an enormous difference in my life, and I am delighted to be able to express my gratitude in such a tangible way. The generosity of earlier generations of donors made it possible for me to attend Princeton as a young student from Hong Kong, and I have always wanted to do all I could to assure that students in the future.. from the United States and around the world.. will have the same kinds of opportunities I had to learn from faculty members who are leaders in their fields at a university that remains second to none in its commitment to teaching. — Gordon Wu

Hong Kong is the supermarket of Asia. — Eleanor Coppola

I've never been invited to do an exhibition or do a talk in England, except once, about 10 years ago. I've given talks all across Canada, many in the United States, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan - but not England. — Brian Wildsmith

Ingesting divine cinnabar will make your lifespan inexhaustible. You will last as long as heaven and earth, be able to travel on clouds and ride dragons, and ascend at will to the Heaven of Highest Clarity — Ge Hong

In whatever you do, if you leave a sense of incompleteness, then Creation cannot resent you, ghosts and spirits cannot harm you. If you insist on fulfillment in your work and perfection in achievement, you will become either inwardly deranged or outwardly unsettled. — Zicheng Hong

I've been able to go so many places. I had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong when I was thirteen years old which is crazy. I lived there for three months. It was amazing. I couldn't ask for a more enriched life so far. — Dakota Fanning

Under the Convention of Chuenpi, signed in January 1841 (but then repudiated by the Emperor), Hong Kong became a British possession. — Niall Ferguson

What makes you think I ever got married? Married women work themselves to death, all their money goes to husbands who gamble it away. Why would I ever do that to myself? — Kim Van Alkemade

The teachers never explained what this debt was all about, but we knew it was an embarrassment on the level of a national bedwetting. — Euny Hong

My mother has a very big family in Shanghai, so I have, like, almost 40 cousins, so we stayed together all the time. So by the time I get to Hong Kong, I become the only child and the only one surrounded by adults, you know. — Wong Kar-Wai

A dark-windowed diesel train burst out of the building, close enough to make the bus shake. It helter-skeltered downward into the earth. "Where's it going?" Zanna said. "Crossing the Odd, to some of the other abcities," Jones said. "If you're brave enough to try, you might be able to catch a train from UnLondon to Parisn't, or No York, or Helsunki, or Lost Angeles, or Sans Francisco, or Hong Gone, or Romeless ... It's a terminus. — China Mieville

Part of the Hong Kong style is the fact that a lot of the performers can perform the moves, and we don't over-rehearse this stuff. — Daniel Wu

I was speaking well because I was talking to her; there are people who dry up language. — Maxine Hong Kingston

Political activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan use Facebook as their primary tool to mobilize support for their causes and activities. — Rebecca MacKinnon

CROUCHING TIGER is nevertheless a gloriously big epic, starring the Hong Kong action stars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh in a visionary adventure where the characters seem set free from the force of gravity. — Roger Ebert

If achieving the Hong Kong dream becomes a vanishing hope, then our society will suffer. What would the Hong Kong dream be? It's no different from the American dream, whereby an everyday man on the street who works hard would be able to make good savings and use those savings as equity for their future small business. — Richard Li

i am someone who wants very much to be popular. I don't just want you to like me, I want to be one of the most joy-inducing human beings that you've ever encountered. I want to explode on your night sky like fireworks at midnight on New Year's Eve in Hong Kong. — Carrie Fisher

Nature, God, Buddha - someone has given me this health. I can break dance still; I can run; I can play basketball. In my mind, I can do anything. As long as I have that spirit, I'm going to keep doing it. — James Hong

Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks. Give me plastics, periodical tables, TV dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots. Shine floodlights into dark corners: no ghosts. — Maxine Hong Kingston

When we assist Him in His mission of saving souls, we too will be rescued in the process. — Chi Hong Wong

Most Americans have a sense of what the blues is. But in Hong Kong, they have no sense of the blues. — Jess Row

You can leave Hong Kong, but it will never leave you. — Nury Vittachi

I was a regular on 'Holby City,' and I did daytime; that's how I started off. Off in Hong Kong doing stuntman stuff, then coming back to England doing daytime soap operas. — Scott Adkins

In a sense, Britain inadvertently, through its actions in Hong Kong, did more to reduce world poverty than all the aid programs that we've undertaken in the last century, — Paul Romer