Wealth & Money Quote by Ang Lee

There is a particular kind of humiliation that only adulthood can deliver: the moment you are responsible for a new life and your bank balance answers with a number that might as well be a punchline. Ang Lee’s memory lands because it strips filmmaking of its glamour and frames it as a near-ordinary crisis - not a red-carpet anecdote, but a diaper problem. The specificity ($26, the hospital pickup, the ATM screen) does what good directing does: it blocks the scene so you can’t look away.

The intent isn’t self-pity; it’s calibration. Lee is telling you what “sending scripts” actually costs when you don’t have leverage: not just rejection, but the quiet fear that ambition is stealing from your family. That subtext reframes the romantic myth of the struggling artist. It’s not bohemian; it’s logistical, domestic, and morally loaded.

Context matters: Lee’s early career was marked by years of uncertainty in the U.S., writing scripts, entering competitions, trying to break through. By anchoring the “lowest point” to fatherhood, he links creative risk to generational stakes. The line also works as a retroactive origin story - the kind successful people tell not to brag, but to restore scale. Great careers often get narrated as inevitabilities; Lee insists on contingency. One missed break and the story is diapers you can’t buy, not awards you can.