“In my first few years of being in New York, I had a major identity crisis because I’d never stayed in one place for so long.”

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.

I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained.

I’m happy being around my family.

There’s a time in everybody’s life they really don’t want to talk to people: they want to get away from talking or being on the phone and stuff.

Perhaps the world’s second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore.

In my own musical existence I don’t feel that being a guitar player is like the best thing on earth to be. I would rather be a balanced musician.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue.

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks.

Right now, America is under the gun. It’s being tested and is being co-opted in a big way.

Not even always preaching but just leading, motivating them by being a leader.