“I remember I took a music course in junior year of high school, and some girl brought in ‘Teardrops On My Guitar,’ and she was like, ‘Isn’t this song great?’ And everyone was like, ‘Who’s Taylor Swift?’ And now, every time I listen to Taylor Swift, I remember that moment.”

I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S. I didn’t identify as that before I came here.

I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that’s important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way.

I tend to not want to do that anymore. It’s not even that I don’t like it anymore: it’s that I keep trying to find ways for people to dislike me.

I’m punk, but I love gold.

I actually love the summer. When I went to Miami on tour, I was actually like, ‘I love this place.’

I’m not an innovator.

I wanted to take up guitar because playing piano is a little harder. Carrying a keyboard around is harder, and finding a real piano is much harder, and I wanted to play live more, so I figured a guitar would be easier to carry around.

I don’t really listen to pop-country, but I like really, really old country that’s closer to folk. Like Johnny Cash, who is considered country.

I really just care about making music and how I can make it next.

On one hand, I think it’s very important to talk about race and talk about gender, because if it’s not talked about, then we won’t progress.

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

I can’t read in a car, because I’ll get sick. It’s almost instant.

Oftentimes, the most important decisions I make are the ones I don’t put much thought into.

If I ever found a place where I belonged, that in itself would be an identity crisis to me.

I lived abroad most of my life in insular international communities.

I don’t set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it’s about.

We built walls around them with slits through which to fire arrows at scary, cross-eyed rural people, and brought our food and family inside because they were the safest places to be.

It is no longer an allegation, it is an established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it.

What brought me to Disney was the new regime, which is now the old regime, came over with Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg.

I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

I was brought up as a Catholic, and I’m no longer a Catholic.

We brought him [Raffi Torres] in because he was an emotional, physical player. He’s had nothing but a great attitude and a great work ethic with us all year long.

The first matter that the slave will be brought to account for on the Day of Judgment is the prayer.

I always go by instinct and then wrestle with where by instinct brought me.