“You always want what you can’t have, and that all-American thing, from the day I was born,”

Miyazaki movies were what I was raised on. I’ve watched them since I was very young, and I’ve been greatly shaped by them.

When I record, it’s this very precious and insular thing.

If I have a song where I hit some really high notes, I want to try to bring in equivalently low notes somewhere in there.

I’m Japanese, and I’m also white American, and neither camp wants me in their camp.

Whenever I’ve tried to ingratiate myself to an existing community, I tend to give too much, to become whatever it is they want me to be. It’s something I do automatically – I’ve learnt to immediately adapt.

I have this thing about being acknowledged and accepted by institutions.

I don’t think ‘bleak’ is a bad thing.

Things seem to take so much longer for me to do. I have to say things 10 times instead of once. I have to knock on 10 different doors instead of two. For everything.

I created this ‘ideal America.’ Finally I came to the U.S. and realised, ‘Oh, I don’t belong here, either.’

All I want to do at karaoke is sing Mariah Carey.

I have my privileges, but I do feel like at every turn there is such resistance.

I think my whole identity is formed around not knowing where I’m from. It might even be that I find comfort in that confusion.

When you’re doing something you’re not used to, you kind of realize that you’re still a kid: even though the whole world around you sees you as an adult and you’re expected to act like an adult, you still haven’t actually grown up.

It’s very tempting, when somebody says they like this about you, to want to do that over and over.

I would love for Rivers Cuomo to listen to my music and see what he thinks.

I think my real influences are out of my control, which are the things that entered my brain when I was a kid growing up.

Im really starting to like all this spy work, vee said. When my normal life gets boring, all i have to do is sidle up next to you.

You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.

The unsung, impersonal world remains outside, on the other surface of a placenta. All songs, even when their content or rendering is strongly masculine, operate maternally.

You do not have to force yourself to do anything at all. There is a continual exchange, a continual dance. It is similar to the sun shining and plants growing. The sun has no desire to create the vegetation; plants simply react to sunlight and the situation develops naturally.

All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

The lapse of ages changes all things – time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing about, around, and underneath man, except man himself.

The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure.

I suppose that now would be the time to ask for forgiveness for all the things I’ve done, but I’m sure my list would never be complete.