Don't lose faith in what you are trying to do, even though you will get pummeled emotionally left and right. There are a lot of nos to any yes. And that's OK.

Chinese cooking is noisy - a multitasking activity that requires constant vigilance. There is no downtime.

I am obsessed with Chinese restaurants. Like many Americans, I first discovered them in my childhood.

Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.

If you don't want the nickname, don't live up to it.

Loneliness is something we [all people] go through. We go through mourning and longing. We make some bad choices sometimes because we're desperate for something, and that's okay. That's part of life.

I like to say, Chop sueys the biggest culinary joke that one culture has ever played on another, because chop suey, if you translate into Chinese, means tsap sui, which, if you translate back, means odds and ends.

Let your heart beat for music. Don't be a DJ for the wrong reasons, do it because you have a passion for it.

When you are free from self-doubt, you fail better. You accept criticism and listen.

I think if you create well balanced characters that are well represented, boys and girls relate to them whether they're boys or girls.

I'm still the person who naively thinks if I can imagine it, I can have it.

I'm always open to questions asked, and it will be up to me at that moment to decide if I want to answer or not. I've always been the kind of artist that wanted to focus so much more on the music than all these other things. For example, what does it feel like to be a female in a male dominated industry?

We might be shifting away from a Eurocentric view of the United States into something that's much more multicultural, multinational, and Chinese food is just one slice of that.