Cover versions, that's my forte, that's all I ever used to do. When you play your own songs, it's quite scary, 'cause I'm quite honest and open, they can be very revealing. But covers, I don't have to think about, just get me up there!
Growing up as an Asian American in this society, there were a lot of times where you feel isolated or out of place as an Asian. And growing up in White America, that's absolutely my experience. And I think that's why I got into acting because I wanted to be anybody else but Asian.
I saw a ghost when I was staying at Dartington Hall in Devon in the 1960s. I think there are many different kinds of entities, some are scary and some aren't, it depends on the state of mind you're in when you are confronted. I found that quite scary because it appeared when I was asleep, so it was quite a shock, but the other ones I've encountered, I didn't find scary. I have a lot more understanding of them.
Growing up, I wasn't as comfortable expressing myself as I am now, and I think that's why I chose acting: because it's acceptable to have your feelings. It's a place that they want you to feel. Whereas in life, growing up, it was 'Be quiet!' and 'Keep it to yourself.'
I think America offers a dream that cannot be fulfilled as easily anywhere else in the world as it could be fulfilled here. Although oppression was common to all of us, those styles of oppression gave us the opportunity to see the world in dimensions we didn't quite see growing up in any one place.
After you have loss in your life and after you experience something like losing your parents, the greatest gift of that was it prepared me for [anything]. Nothing else is as scary, and certainly stand-up comedy is not as scary as sitting there with your mom and having to have last conversations and things like that. It's heavy stuff, but it's enlightening because it makes me think I shouldn't be afraid of sharing ideas and thoughts with people. It's the yin and the yang of life.
I think there's something kind of good about growing up in a place you know is not the cool place to be. I think it's good for your head.
I think that when you're young, you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. You're anxious; the world seems like a scary place. You don't know where you're going to fit in, what you're gonna do with your life - but actually, life has a way of sorting itself out, and universal law takes over.
I was always very aware of the nature of the place where I was growing up in Gulfport, Mississippi, how that place was shaping my experience of the world. I had to go to the Northeast for graduate school because I felt like I had to get far away from my South, be outside it, to understand it.
I grew up in a family where the internalized understanding was that the kids were going to grow up into a better world. I worry, because I don't think my kids are going to have that. The world is very scary. The world would be scary without the choices the current administration made, but they just exacerbated it. And it ticks me off. I want my kids to have a good life.
On some level, now, we are joining the larger world and realizing that we are connected with people in these very scary ways, sometimes. What happened recently in Spain affects us here and brings questions up. It is too bad that people have to be shaken up in that way.
Growing up it was the exception because I was maybe the only one in my school or my circle of friends that had that experience. But now that I know more people in the industry, I am realizing this happens to almost everybody.
People write because it seems like it'll be an easier job than carpet laying, that they might meet more girls. And they write because the world strikes them as being a marvelous place, and they want to keep bringing that to everybody's attention. You know ~ a scary place, a menacing place, an exciting place because it's scary and menacing. But mainly, kind of glorious.
Acting itself is quite scary. Some people say that actors are show-offs, very egotistical and all that kind of stuff, but it is quite scary.
I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about.
Shops are not a growing business, so it's a scary place to be.