Top 86 Quotes & Sayings by Eric Nam

I think up until the 'Honestly' album it was very much label-company lead, of 'this is a sound that we need, this is what you need to do. You need to do ballads, you need to do a million different types of love songs,' and I hate ballads and I hate love songs.

Traveling has been a really big part of my upbringing and I've been fortunate enough to travel for different reasons. I'd like to think that it has had an impact on my character and personality, which ultimately affects my music.

For the first four or five years I was in Korea, I took a lot of direction from my management and label in terms of what people want. I found myself trying to fit into that thing I never felt comfortable with because the critique I got was that I was too American, and too sophisticated and polished in terms of my musicality and it won't sell.

No matter what you do, you should enjoy it. You should really find passion in it.

We recognize that there have been acts in the past that are Asian or Korean who tried to go, 'Hey, I'm a huge star in Korea, I'm a huge star in Asia so you guys need to respect me for being a huge star there.' But I don't know. As much as we may be big, we have to be very humble and start from the ground up in the States.

I look like a 'Sesame Street' character in real life when I wake up. But not like the cute ones, like kind of like the ones that look a little rough around the edges.

I love BTS, they're my friends.

I'm just looking for that one song that I know everybody's going to be like, 'Damn, that's a good song.'

When I first toured North America, everyone was saying that it was working because there is such as a solid Korean fan base here. The truth is, that is less than five per cent of the audience, which is mixed of all backgrounds.

Living in Korea was a big adjustment because a coffee is going to be a little more pricey than what it is in the States. Wages aren't as high either.

I think K-Pop is something that sucks people in because it's open. I can do pop, EDM, rock, R&B and it doesn't matter, K-Pop embraces them all.

There was a point when dancing to music became cheesy after the boy band era of NSync and Backstreet Boys, but there were always those who craved that kind of visual satisfaction. K-Pop really filled that void, because it's so geared to spectacle.

Even if you look at 'American Idol,' or 'X-Factor,' or 'The Voice' or anything, it was always difficult to see an Asian or an Asian-American make it to a certain point.

I learned Spanish as my second language from middle school through high school. I grew up volunteering at homeless shelters and tutoring kids of Latin immigrants in Atlanta, who didn't speak any English. That prepared me for when I traveled.

It was a dream to be a singer/performer, but I never thought I had a chance or had a real shot; I never thought I was good enough.

I thought it would be so cool to be a musician, but I always thought it was impossible, because I would never be accepted in mainstream media. The fact that I'm able to tour North America and around the world is an incredible blessing, and I am thankful every time I do it.

Nobody looks good getting out of bed.

I am so excited for where and what K-pop is doing and how it's growing. In the music industry it's not a trend, it's not a quick 'oh this is cool for a minute,' this is a full genre, which is exciting and cool.

I'm active on social media because that's such a big reason why K-pop and Korean music performs the way it does.

I'm grateful that the public think of me as a sweet guy, but there are times when I get worried that my behavior would disappoint the public. I'd like to show them that there are different sides of me.

It's become hard for me to trust people and though I'm the type to go, 'everybody is born good,' you come to question that.

The coolest thing for me now is when I'm in the States and I meet other Asian-Americans who are like, 'Dude, thank you so much for doing what you do. I love your music, I love whatever. But whatever you do, we're gonna support you because there aren't many Asian faces doing music.'

One way I deal with stress is when I feel a certain way, I just do it. It's like, I want a hamburger, so I'm just going to eat a hamburger. I don't want to answer your phone call right now - I'm not going to answer your phone call. Just be able to say, 'This is how I feel. This is the way it is, deal with it.'

Korean, yes, I am now fluent in Korean. I was not always. When I got to Korea, I was constantly put on TV shows not knowing what was going on. So that forced me to learn Korean so I could stop looking like an idiot.

Korean-Americans, Asian-Americans are so unbelievably underrepresented in the U.S. entertainment and media industries and I don't think we are given a real shot.

It's easy to talk about how great love is or how you feel heartbroken after a breakup, but it's not as easy to talk about the process of going through the end of a relationship.

I feel like I've always been drawn to a very diverse range of music and I've always enjoyed experimenting, so I'm not quite sure where exactly my music will go.

So I don't have a normal, regimented schedule at all, but on a normal day, I'd say I wake up around 10 A.M.

Yes, I speak English 'cause I'm American.

I feel like people have stereotypes and notions about Latin America that aren't necessarily accurate or aren't particularly positive. For me, Latin America is a place that I personally really love and enjoy visiting and going to, and I wanted to be able to show it in a light that was very different to an Asian, Korean viewer.

I know people are going to be like, 'why do you have so many songs with the word 'you' in it? 'Idea Of You,' 'Into You,' 'Like You,' 'You-Who'... Well, sorry, but it just works out that way.

You know, we never grew up with Asian American role models in the entertainment industry, unfortunately. I'd never seen an Asian face singing on TV.

I've always been very passionate about trying to have Asian-Americans or Asian faces be more prominent in mainstream media.

I had always wanted to pursue music. It was always a dream, but it was always a dream in the sense of, when you're young, 'I want to be president' or 'I want to be an astronaut and fly to Mars.' That's what it was to me.

When you first make money, you're just excited that you have it and just buy things on a whim. You don't really think about the implications that taxes have, because when you owe money, all of a sudden all of the money in your account - it's gone!

In a way, I'm overly ambitious, selfish in a way. I think because I am so active, I think that's what keeps my brain going and I can bounce things off of each other.

I think one thing I wish would be a little different, and it'll take time, is yes BLACKPINK, BTS, these teams are taking over the world and they're everywhere, but I think at a certain point we need to really push for other artists as well, and really help bring them up further, for this to be a sustainable industry, a sustainable genre.

I think representation is something that's absolutely needed. I felt like with K-pop being so hot, we could leverage that to potentially do something bigger with music in the States that people could latch onto.

I think I'm just doing me, my music, my shows, and my stories.

I know people love Supreme. I never got on the wagon.

I was born and raised in the suburbs of Atlanta, which as you can imagine, was not the most diverse place to grow up in as a Korean American.

When I go to Korea and they say, 'Sing like a Korean person,' I can't do it. I didn't grow up with that sound.

I don't know why I feel the need to try and do everything. But I kind of have this mentality that you live once, and I have a lot of things that I want to do and there's a lot of things that I want to try. So I have to at least give it a shot before I don't try at all or like, give up on things.

Asian-Americans are fighting for space and fighting for visibility and for acceptance.

It's always good to dream big, right?

I think there are probably ghosts in the world. I have not seen one but I feel like I felt the presence of one. In Korea there's been a superstition that ghosts love music, so they're always in a studio or a dance-training place.

So the first thing I do when I get out of bed, I will check my phone real quick because I live in Korea, but my stuff is split between L.A. and Korea.

One of my first interviews was Robert Downey Jr. for 'Iron Man.'

When you think of Gallant's music and his voice, you don't automatically think, 'Oh, Eric Nam would be great a fit' or 'Hey! Tablo would be an amazing fit.'

I had accepted a position as a business analyst at Deloitte Consulting in New York. But before I went into that workforce, I decided to take a year off and went to India to do a social enterprise fellowship. It wasn't the best fit, but that was where a TV show in Korea found me and invited me to first come perform.

What works in the States doesn't easily translate to the Korean market.

I want to position myself as a great singer/songwriter in Korea, then jump off that into different markets. South-east Asia, China, Japan - I've done nothing even though I speak four languages - English, Korean, Spanish, and a little bit of Mandarin.

I think Korea is so focused on just the charts, and what's going to chart and what's not, and I'm sure it's like that way in the States as well, to a certain degree. But I enjoy working in the States a little bit more. Because it's more about making music that is the right sound and the right fit to me, not so much just chasing the charts.

I'd love to do some collabs or music with Latin artists and in Latin America - we're working on it! I just really love Latin America and the language, culture, foods, people, and it's a place I grew up visiting pretty often.

Being a hungry artist, you don't have the luxury of buying whatever you want. There were years of me doing a lot of odd jobs, this and that just to make ends meet.

No matter what job or industry you're in, life is hard, but we're all going through a difficult time and the best thing we can do is pick each other up and move on together.

Sunbae-hoobae seniority is a very tricky, weird kind of thing.

I have a very complicated relationship with my skin. It is sensitive, I think, to just changes in water, particularly because I travel so much.

In the States I might be an Asian face, look different from everyone else in TV and in music, but in Korea I look like everybody else, in Asia I look like everybody else.

I'm a very blunt person.