“I really like The Cars. They’re just so over the top and super pop, but I don’t feel guilty. I’m proud of all the music I listen to.”

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.

I think music is supposed to be shared.

Then you start to realise, ‘Oh, I’m bending a lot,’ and they’re just standing there existing, and I’m bending around them. But you can’t blame them: they don’t realise it; that’s just how they already existed. It’s hard.

They made me feel pretty good. But it also did not make me feel bad NOT winning the Academy Award.

I don’t regret anything. I feel like I’ve made what I would call mistakes.

You always feel the drawing you are working on is the best you’ve ever done… I am only interested in the present.

You gotta have a concrete lawn before I feel comfortable enough to go in and talk to you parents.

I feel great. George W.Bush is leaving. We’re leaving. It’s all perfect timing.

As a kid growing up, I was so in sync as a fan that that served me well through the years. I can feel the game.

You put deadlines on people you really don’t want, because that’s how you feel about them.

Im so sick of people treating Latinos like some homogenous group that all feel the same way about everything.