Top 70 Quotes & Sayings by Tamlyn Tomita

Growing up with my mother who grew up during World War II being half Filipina, half Okinawan, and literally running around the jungles in the Philippines escaping Japanese military chasing after them - I grew up with what they deem now as trauma, generational trauma.

We have to support everyone so their stories don't get 'invisibilized.' We don't necessarily have to repopulate the next Marvel movie with people of color, but it's just about saying 'We have hearts, we have souls, we have minds, we have faults, we have flaws, and we're super-freaking interesting.'

I knew I looked kind of ridiculous, in my personal opinion - Tamlyn Tomita's opinion - a Vulcan in sunglasses and ears is a little too much, but I knew I just had to play it seriously.

For me, for every single job, I don't care if it is a reading, I don't care if it is a guest spot on a TV show, or a film. I always get the heebie jeebies.

The scope of the history of women is so underplayed and not told as often as it should be.

My father's grandfather was in Heart Mountain.

I'm looking for projects where race is not an issue.

Asian males have not been appreciated for what they are. They have always been dissed for what they are not.

JACL has always been at the very forefront of making sure citizens' civil rights remain intact. They fight wholeheartedly against discrimination, prejudice and racial bias and they always provide a calm voice during turbulent times.

But I'm proud to come from a family of Republicans and, yes, we have some spirited discussions in our family.

In period pieces or genre pieces, those have to be set in historical truths. But, science fiction has different game pieces. And with those game pieces come other stories we're not familiar with. So, science fiction teaches us how to relate to outsiders, to foreigners, and to not approach any of that with fear, but a genuine curiosity.

I absolutely adore Vancouver, it's really been my second home.

I did not want to become an actor.

There is an attitude that Okinawans have about Japan itself. There is a resentment.

We are all woven of different colored threads and strengths and colors. We are all a part of something bigger, a very special part of something that continues to evolve. A more perfect union.

I remember reading one of those big history texts in elementary school, and in that whole book there was one paragraph that mentioned that Japanese-Americans were interned. I went home and asked my father, 'You weren't, were you?' He said, 'Yes, I was.' I was shocked.

We are a part of this unique, complex, and complicated fabric of what it means to be an American. Americans come in all colors, creeds, and colors of the rainbow, and we can celebrate this together.

I think you can assume because our pool of Asian-Americans actresses or actors - men and women - is pretty small, that whatever project is out there I probably have been asked to audition or I probably chose to not go in it for various aspects.

I'm much too egotistical to move outside the acting realm.

I've been really lucky and been able to live a gypsy life for a long time.

Our old stories happen to be your new stories. The stories that you're seeing as immigrant stories are your grandparents' stories, are your great-grandparents' stories. You just happen to be separated from them a little bit.

Aren't we all 'Star Trek' fans? That's the show that captured our imaginations after cartoons and everything!

Barbara Feldon on 'Get Smart,' I wanted to be her.

Most Japanese-Americans have that legacy. The camp experience is something of a calling card between them. They say, 'So, where were you interned?'

The Asian woman in Hollywood movies has usually been one of two extremes - totally submissive or totally ruthless. In either case her primary function has been decorative.

Film and television are major vehicles for American storytelling, and America is the biggest exporter and influencer in the world in terms of telling stories.

Of course, if you're going to enter the 'Star Trek' Universe, you want to work with Spock, you want to work with Kirk, you want to work with McCoy, and Scotty, and Sulu, and Uhura. The next one for me would have been Picard.

You can't escape 'Star Trek' influence, especially characters you literally grew up with.

As a community, as a group of people as a society, Asian Americans have not always been visible, but we've always been present.

We can serve as bridges, we who identify as hyphenated Americans, because we are all global citizens, and that's why being cognizant of our histories is important.

I think that the story of mothers and daughters is so universal.

It's always the great thing about being involved in such a legacy series such as 'Star Trek' is you'll always want to know more about the characters that you love.

I think that is what all ethnic actors aspire to - to just play a woman who falls in love, or works as a clerk, or whatever - and then, if you want to, to have that luxury to bring in the cultural heritage.

I don't think as a society, as a nation we would ever wear swastikas openly again, but aligning ourselves with the kind of rhetoric or the the the kind of language that's being used and ascribed to certain groups of people or certain religions can be repeated.

The wonderful John Avildsen was a hero and father figure who was really present in my life even though we didn't have day-to-day or year-to-year.

We have to look beyond what we see as the typical, the 'normal package,' and just see people as who they are. We all have to learn and get along a little better in society.

I didn't want to be trapped in an idea of replicating other 'Star Trek' characters; especially Vulcans. But my love and I have Spock paraphernalia all over our house. He's an omnipresence in our lives, we adore him.

It's funny you can pretty much substitute the same actors in that top tier, whether it's a Chris Evans or a Chris Pratt or a Chris Pine, for different movies and it becomes almost a joke. But it doesn't happen that way for people of color.

Not everybody's journey is easy, and it wouldn't be worthwhile if you can't see what you gained without realizing what kind of battles you've been through, what kind of scars you have.

If I am more fortunate than others I need to build a longer table not a taller fence.

I just tell young people to find their way. Keep your eyes open. Keep your ears open and keep your heart open.

When I went in for 'The Good Doctor,' I had just been released from 'Berlin Station.' And when I got the initial role for the 'Good Doctor' pilot, her name was Allegra Abe. That was the script.

The only reason I even learned Japanese was to figure out what my parents were getting me for Christmas.

So if they happen to be over the age of 35 and they're male? They're probably going to recognize me from 'The Karate Kid Part II.'

The thing I found in correlation with my studies as a history major was that experience taught me you have to figure out your background, where you come from, who you are, and what you want. All of that propelled me into following acting because I had to develop characters as well as develop characters' history which is most important.

I'm interested in Native American and African American stories, and LGBTQ stories and stories of persons of mixed heritage. These are the stories I want to see onscreen and on the pages.

The idea of scrolling is amazing because you could just bypass everybody's whatever, but then whatever catches your eye - yeah, I don't judge those people who tweet their breakfast, lunch and dinner but, I like to just use it for special occasions.

I was born in Okinawa, but on a U.S. Army base. And my father is Japanese-American which means that he is second generation, but my mom was born in the Philippines and raised in Okinawa. So, how do you know where you are generationally from? I can claim all three legitimately, but I like to say that I am third generation American.

My mother, she's the one who's gifted with language. She can speak Japanese, of course, Tagalog, which is a Filipino dialect, Spanish as well as English. And I speak a little bit Japanese because I've had the opportunity to work alongside Japanese people. And a little bit of German, a little bit of Portuguese because of work. A little bit of French because of work. But then, if you asked me to carry-on an everyday conversation, I would fail miserably.

I know that I present very - they say that I present very, very calm and very, very smart, very articulate, elegant. Yeah. And I go, 'Brilliant teams of makeup and wardrobe happened to dress me and clothe me and put my face on and do my hair. And then these brilliant teams of writers give me words to speak. I just need to make sure that I have them all in this combination in my body, in my being, and then I get to do it on camera, in front of a brilliant team of camera workers who really know how to like me and make me sound good.' So I'm just really a dork in real life.

It's a shameful piece of history and I think - I don't mean to be political or sobering or anything - but I think America, the United States, we still have to deal with the issue of our original sin, which was slavery. And I think we're seeing the ramifications, the consequences, of not really facing the truth as to what we as a nation struggled towards. You know, struggled with and are still struggling and rectifying.

The fact is that we wouldn't have found out about Manzanar except in our story-telling because it was really never told in the American history books when we attended school. So we were very, very lucky to have that part of history told.

We've got to learn from each other. We have to put ourselves out there, we want to pull the other up because we want/should pull the other line up as we all have strengths and weaknesses and together we make a stronger group, family, community, world. And so it becomes a beautiful idea that can be practiced in that dealing with a person with autism can be...It's just different. It's not weird.

Twitter vs Instagram is a left brain versus right brain kind of social media device. Twitter is for speaking, whereas Instagram is for your artistry. It's how we communicate, via visual versus our words. So it's a good workout, it's a good brain workout.

We know that there were so many Japanese American soldiers in World War II who were fighting in Europe despite the fact that their families, their parents were back home in American prison camps. It's savagely ironic that between themselves and the African-American soldiers, who were also segregated and didn't see the fruition of the work the culminated in the Civil Rights Act until the '60s, that these American heroes and their stories are not well known; and the fact that the 442nd/100th became the most decorated unit in U.S. history.

In fact, when we as neuro-typical people encounter a person with autism spectrum syndrome who's always been that way it is that we have to adjust. Just because we can read people with autism correctly, whatever that word is why do we always default to saying, 'Well, that kid is not normal?' What is normal?

I can't emphasize more to you that I had the luxury, the privilege of living up here in Vancouver. I feel like I'm on vacation, and I get to work, as well. I don't think I need a vacation after working. I'd just like to really look with a positive outlook in being here in such a beautiful city. I really am feeling lucky on the days off that I have, that I'm here on vacation in Vancouver, British Columbia.

What I had found after the success of Karate Kid II is that an actor basically needs to - a primary requirement on my part as how I view as actor is you have to create a background, you have to create a history of that character and place her into the script that you're reading and carry on forward because you don't know how the future unfolds. This is what storytelling is you place a certain set of circumstances with a certain set of characters and you see what unfolds after an event happens.

Why do we tell stories? It's because we want to connect to people, we want to tell them who we are, we want to tell them a story that affects us, that impacts us. And to help a young filmmaker doing a short or independent film is my testament, I think, is my desire to really make sure that our younger generations get passed along all the elders' experience and to literally have the image - to literally carry them on their shoulders and say, 'This is what the world is. This is how the world operates. Let me show you how.'

I happen to be one of those lucky people who says that she's a working actor. And to always be working is very fulfilling and I'm just lucky because the opportunities just came up. And as an Asian American female actor, the opportunities have been furthering, have been widening all across the years. And I can say that there are many young people who see that the opportunities are expanding, as well as you can make it yourself.