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

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.

Everything is so chaotic and messy in the world, and I have always felt kind of dirty.

I don’t think I have the kind of creativity to write fiction.

Growing up, I never really felt like anything was my own. I moved a lot, and I never belonged anywhere.

I hate that my opinions are gonna be on record… that my opinions of other artists are going to be on record.

I’ve stopped wanting a home, I think, because I’ve been on tour all my life, basically.

Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.

On tour, people know that if they ever ask me what I want to eat, I will always say Asian food. I’m becoming a stereotype, but it’s what I want to eat. I want to eat rice.

I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.

Whenever someone says they like something about my music.

A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn’t like that for me. I didn’t think of it as a job or a career – it was just something that was constant.

Charity, especially towards the vulnerable, is the best opportunity we have to keep working to build up a culture of encounter.

Create the kind of workplace and company culture that will attract great talent. If you hire brilliant people, they will make work feel more like play.

Cultures aren’t so much planned as they evolve from that early set of people.

A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.

Mr. Bean is essentially a child trapped in the body of a man. All cultures identify with children in a similar way, so he has this bizarre global outreach.

Trade is a communication of cultures and values.

Culture changes, fashions change, customs change. Great music is immortal.

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.