Chinatown Quotes

I was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1948 but grew up in a black neighborhood. During elementary and middle school, I commuted to a bilingual school in Chinatown. So I did not confront white American culture until high school.

The cultural pressure for a middle-class Chinese-American to walk, talk and act like a lower-class thug from Chinatown is nil. The same can be said of Jews, or of any other ethnic group. But in black America the folly is so commonplace it fails to attract serious attention.

Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place they’re capable of anything.

The trouble with that movie is that you had to see Chinatown the day before you saw The Two Jakes.

I’m not in business to be loved, but I am in business.

I always think it’s absurd when people go, ‘How can you have a show about Batman without Batman?’ ‘Gotham’ is plenty fascinating, ‘Chinatown’ style.

Hiro watches the large, radioactive, spear-throwing killer drug lord ride his motorcycle into Chinatown. Which is the same as riding it into China, as far as chasing him down is concerned.

Films like ‘The Godfather,’ ‘Chinatown’ and ‘The Exorcist’ brought a realism and currency and understatement to their genres that we wanted for ‘Mildred Pierce.’

Everyone thinks that ‘Chinatown’ is the best screenplay. I’m not sure it is.

I try to always have flowers in the house. I have a florist in Chinatown, and they deliver orchids every two weeks. I like living with living things.

You wouldn’t think such a place as San Francisco could exist. The wonderful sunlight there, the hills, the great bridges, the Pacific at your shoes. Beautiful Chinatown. Every race in the world. The sardine fleets sailing out. The little cable-cars whizzing down The City hills. And all the people are open and friendly.

Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.

I became addicted to the movie-going experience in the 1970s, when I attended multiple screenings of films such as ‘Chinatown’, ‘Jaws’, ‘Star Wars’ and the original ‘Rocky’.

Living in L.A., it’s such a big huge place and there’s so much of it. It’s so much fun to be in Chinatown, or Downtown L.A. I was in Lynnwood, I was in Huntington Beach. I was in Venice. It’s an incredible place.

Southeast Asia food uses many different types of spices which are quite new to me, like the curry leaves which I saw at the Kreta Ayer wet market in Chinatown. With such spices used in cooking, this usually imparts a strong aroma to Southeast Asian food, which appeals to the senses.

Having spent many years working in New York’s Chinatown restaurants early in my career, I have the utmost respect for the history and connection New Yorkers have with Chinese cuisine.

Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.

I’ve always wanted to make a film about the Tong Wars, the rioting and the crime factions in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early part of the last century.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

I took a Chinatown bus to New York to enroll in the International Culinary Center’s pastry program.

Chinatown is tremendously interesting… It’s a part of the city that hasn’t really been explored in crime literature or in any general literature. It’s as though Chinatown didn’t exist. People write about New York without mentioning Chinatown at all.

I guess ‘The Player’ was a pretty good L.A. movie. And ‘Chinatown.’ Was there ever a better L.A. movie about a certain period in L.A.? That was terrific.

You’re dumber than you think I think you are.

Country town to the city heart, in every corner of the globe you’ll find a Chinatown, a Chinese restaurant or an Asian grocer. From this vast and ancient culture, we credit noodles, dumplings, rice, countless spices and cooking techniques to have enriched every culture that they’ve landed in.

I arrived in New York in 1986, when I was 28. The market here was nothing. In the Union Square farmers’ market, it was a couple of potatoes, everything from California. So the only place I was comfortable shopping was in Chinatown, because it all came from Hong Kong.