I think one of the great things is that when I got started, no one would return my calls, and now I get a lot of phone calls, which is good. I have options.

Technology has grown so much that there's a whole idea of gluttony. Sometimes you get carried away because you can have a camera go through the window, but do I need a camera go through the window? Those choices are up to the director.

I kind of approach action/non-action very much similarly. It has to be character-based and it has to kind of come off the theme and the overall arc.

I'm the child of immigrants.

People I work with are part of my family now: I feel like that's the new sense of family around the world.

Film is similar to a basketball game. When that buzzer sounds, win or lose, the only thing you can control is how much effort you put into it.

I always end up in these volatile situations.

I've been fortunate to be able to try everything. But I have to say 'Warrior' has been my pride and joy.

Cinema is actually very backward. When we see gay characters or people of color, they're always there for that reason. I'm personally kind of sick of that. I love to see characters who just live and breathe and are comfortable in that space.

When I was growing up, the honor role kids were picked on by the jocks. And those kids said, 'You know, 15 years from now, I'm going to be their boss and own them.'

It's dangerous to buy the American Dream without questioning. We need to ask, 'Why do I want this dream?'

When I think of high school, stills are so important: it's all about the wallet with the kids - they define themselves with pictures, who they know, whose pictures they have. Yearbook pictures.

When I was in film school I had this great professor, Jerzy Antczak, a Polish filmmaker, and Joe Russo of the Russo Brothers were in my class. It was this kind of Easter European philosophy of motivating camera only through character and motions, and just exploring with lenses. That was the best year of my education in my life.

You can't cheat comedy. You know, it either is going to be there on the day you capture or it's not.

I love films where even if you don't like the film, it doesn't matter. It's about respecting a point of view.

I love Kubrick.

It's about supporting the many talented artists and filmmakers out there trying to create work from that marginalized point of view. Go out and buy tickets to their movies and plays, support their crowd sourcing campaigns, show the industry that there is a viable audience for this work.

Working with actors is actually something I treasure a lot.

The great thing about a big studio movie is that you get to work with the best, the most talented craft people in the world. But you have to be able to communicate, trust, and empower everybody.

Fast and the Furious' is really a postmodern Western.

For me, I always loved summer movies. I love indie movies, foreign films, but there's definitely a part of me that loves summer movies, ever since I was a kid.

Boxing is one of the very few things left in life that you know who you are as soon as you step into the ring.

Annapolis' is a very personal journey about this working-class kid trying to find out who he is, and every time he steps into the ring we get a sense of who he is as a person.

Boxing is a big part of American cinema.

As an Asian immigrant coming in, for the longest time I still had problems getting in the lot because they're just not used to seeing someone like me who's directing these films. I do think ultimately there's a point where we can kind of just shed that label and become filmmakers.

I left 'Fast and Furious' because I just felt like, at a certain point, after number six, there wasn't another story that I wanted to tell.

They never complained, that's what I love about my parents and it's something that inspired me.

My brothers and I would try to talk our dad into letting us stay up and watch 'Star Trek.' I remember watching it and feeling that a family is not just by blood, a family is a shared experience and that really stuck with me.

As a filmmaker, if you want to write a script, all you need is some paper and a pen or a computer, that's it.

If you watch 'Fast and Furious 6,' you do see that it's a culmination of something and I think it's the end of a chapter.

I always found it interesting when you went off to college, people would talk about how you go and search for your own identity. A lot of suburban middle-class kids would be shopping for identities and they would co-opt identities from other cultures.

Every time you try to do something different, you have to expect obstacles.

Studio films are driven by marketing. The currency is literally money. But in the indie world, the currency is passion.

I'm so sick of independent films being co-opted by Hollywood. You're making a project that's small, really personal, and the first thing anyone asks in any meeting is, 'Who's in it?' I'm like, 'Are you kidding?'

Space is a big place.

I get that a lot of people love 'Star Wars' - and I could see that you can love both and they can coexist in our lives. But the DNA of 'Star Trek' is different in as far as it's human beings, it's us in the future.

Growing up as an Asian American, we're lucky to have two sentences in a history book about the Chinese-American experience.

Star Trek' is not just about literal exploration, but also the exploration of ourselves.

As a society, we're not perfect by any means.

At the end of the day, if you're living by fear, you're gonna get screwed in Hollywood.

You hear nightmare stories from young filmmakers working in Hollywood, being told what to do.

After 'Furious 6,' that was a natural break for me. It was a good time to step away.

I grew up in the working class suburbs in the 80s so I do love Hollywood movies but what I don't like is when they take something that's successful and they recycle it.

Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others.

That is just the reality of being a marginalized person in this country: you have to deal with the psychological impact of your oppressor - whether that's being a woman dealing with men or gay people dealing with straight people or trans people dealing with everybody else.

I remember the first time that I realized that being black meant that I wasn't allowed certain things. It was in the fourth grade, and it was who I thought was my best friend not inviting me to his birthday party because I would be the only black kid there. It was the first time I ever felt restricted, and it certainly wasn't the last time.

If I just wanted to put clean, perfect images of black people on the screen for an hour and a half, first of all, there are other people already doing that, and they're making a lot of money doing it.

You know what, man, that's part and parcel of being a black person in this country: everything's harder. It just is.

I loved Lena Dunham's 'Girls.'

It is frustrating having to walk through America having to bob and weave people's impressions of me because they see a tall black guy walking down the street. That is frustrating.