The Crow

I don't know if I was destined to play this role, but I feel very fortunate to be doing so.

It's a wonderful role and it really is a role that you have to take risks with, and it gives you the opportunity to take those risks and stretch. Because you tell me how someone who comes back from the dead is going to behave. ...

"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, and yet everything happens only a certain number of times ... How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood ... that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps 4 or 5 times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless."

I know that's a kind of a roundabout way of talking about it. But we tend to take a great deal for granted, because you feel like you're going to live forever. It's only if you lose a friend, or maybe have a near-death experience, [that] many events and people in your life suddenly attain real significance. When you take into account the fact that that could have been the last time I would ever see that person [or] do something so mundane as go out to dinner ... This is [where] this character [Eric Draven] is coming from. [He realizes] how precious each moment of his life is.

quotes from the last interview, March 19, 1993

The full quote from The Sheltering Sky, on Brandon's gravestone

Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It is that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember as certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps 4 and 5 times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.

The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles, 1949

On the spiritual side of martial arts

For me, the martial arts is a search for something inside. It's not just a physical discipline. Because, if it was just a physical discipline, you may as well take up weightlifting, or playing soccer, or baseball, or anything else. Why is it the martial arts have generated this tremendous interest and excitement that these other things haven't? Because these other things are just surface. When you see someone who is greatest at what they do, it goes beyond a physical perfection. The don't just go out there and pump their muscles and win. There's got to be an inner spiritual - whatever it is for them - aspect to what they're doing. That's what the martial arts is to me. I'm trying to develop that. The physical stuff comes along with it, and is an expression of it. And each move should be an expression of the serenity that's inside. Because if the move is just a move, then it's just waving your arms about and shouting. And anybody can do that.

Black Belt, 1986

My personal opinion would simply be that one could always look to pay more attention to the spiritual side of the martial arts than the physical side. I think that is probably an area that initially attracts most people to the martial arts. The majority of people that seem to want to ask me questions about the martial arts, the questions seem to center on this vague interest they have in the "spirituality of the martial arts", but they don't seem to really know what they're talking about. It's some kind of vague interest where they say "Isn't there some kind of whole spiritual side to that thing?" But I'm not sure they really know what they are talking about. You know, the martial arts is a pursuit that, in my mind, is very capable of providing some deep and lasting spiritual experiences to a person, if that person is open to them. When you move down the road towards the mastery of the martial arts and, you know, you are constantly moving down that road, you end up coming up against these barriers inside yourself that will attempt to stop you from continuing to pursue the mastery of the martial arts. And these barriers are such things as when you come up against your own limitations, when you come up against the limitations of your will, your ability, your natural ability, your courage, how you deal with success - and failure as well, for that matter. And as you overcome each one of these barriers, you end up learning something about yourself. And, sometimes, the things you learn about yourself can, to the individual, seem to convey a certain spiritual sense along with them. Not only a self-knowledge, but through knowledge of self, a knowledge of others as well.

John Little, The Warrior Within, 1996

Young Brandon on Bruce

Bruce Lee is a man who only concentrates to make his script better. And only wants to make his movie better regardless of how much money it may cost. Furthermore he cares for his family. And would drive himself day and night. Just to make his script better. He is always trying to make his films more lifelike and more dramatic. His movies are superb and my opinion of him is he is a hero. His films are so thrilling and he is my idol. In America he would teach Jeet Kune Do and his students respected him.

He is unable to walk down the streets without everyone asking for his autograph. He can be gentle ever though at times he can be fierce. And he is quite happy with what he has achieved.

Brandon Bruce Lee, Oct. 1972