Zhang Yimou Quotes

Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.

I feel like I had quite a bad time from about 2003 to 2007.

It was a hard time. It was something I would love to erase from my memory.

A lot of my stories about the old days, they're delicious and funny. But every time I recall the early days, it's painful. With every anecdote, it's painful because you're summoning up the terribly, terribly difficult life of my parents. And it's painful because I didn't realize at the time how hard it was for them.

I do tend to divide my childhood into darkness and light, and the first seven years were certainly the darkness.

Sometimes, it's just your turn to go through hard times.

human beings seem to hold on more tenaciously to a cultural identity that is learned through suffering than to one that has been acquired through pleasure and delight.

I've suffered through the worst possible conditions.

There are moments when tribulations occur in our lives, and we cannot avoid them. But they are there for some reason.

Everybody's got their troubles.

Life could be cruel enough these days without the truth making it worse.

Seriously,” Shane said, “this kind of is the worst situation we’ve ever been in, right?” “Speak for yourself,” Michael said. “I got myself killed last year. Twice.” “Oh yeah. You’re right—last year really sucked for you.

But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.

He who suffers, remembers.

Why do people have memories? It would be easier to die - anything to stop remembering.

Pleasure is hard to come by, but pain is everywhere these days, I must learn to subsist on it.

You look back at a time you idealize now and you only remember the good stuff. You tell the stories about the hard stuff and just laugh about it now. You don't remember how difficult it was to be stranded in Austin after driving 52 hours from Seattle in a rainstorm and having nowhere to stay for five hours. You remember that stuff and laugh about it now. You don't feel it the way you did back then when you were so scared and nervous and tired and hungry. We always idealize the past because we don't feel the painful stuff the way we used to.

We relate all our afflictions more frequently than we do our pleasures.

I've had, what, two years? Probably five good years. Before that I had twenty years of uncertainty and suffering and ego destruction and poverty. All those things. That'll always outweigh the good times.

I think sometimes the very reason we go through something is so that we can be empathetic with another person later on.

It's probably been the worst three months of my life.

It's not easy to find a topic. Talking of home is painful. Talking of the present unbearable.

Things are rough all over.

I think the hardest one had to do with suffering. It had to do with all of our church members and friends passing through difficult times. Sometimes it's the global climate: tsunamis, earthquakes, radiation. I think these kinds of questions are absolutely the most difficult, yet we need to be ready to respond to them because we have to be able as pastors to walk people through these valleys, these tough times in their lives.

Evils draw men together.