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.
Don't hate me because I can't remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.
I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and always afraid I would look like a sissy. Everybody else played baseball; everybody else did all kinds of athletic things.
As we look at Hollywood and the controversy around the Oscars, it goes back to the voting block and the lack of people who come from that culture. For example, the NWA movie is a fantastic, fantastic movie. You need people who can look at a piece of art like that and understand the artistry in it.
I would like to be called an inspiration to people, not a role model - because I make mistakes like everybody else. When I'm offstage, I'm just like everybody else.
There are so many people who have a training in art history; and if you've spent time looking at old art, you become attuned to what art does through materiality and so you begin to look to that in contemporary art as well. And anyway, I do think that matching one's experience with what you're looking at and questioning what you're looking inevitably involves materiality, just like it involves the sense of place.
I'm a guy that tries to eat right. I try to keep my body right. I try to do all the right things. But like everybody else, I have flaws. I slip up. I eat the wrong things sometimes. I have cheat days. I think I make mistakes just like everybody else, but I try to minimize them.
I think that a lot of artists have succeeded in making what I might call "curator's art." Everybody's being accepted, and I always want to say, "Really? That's what you've come for? To make art that looks a lot like somebody else's art?" If I am thinking of somebody else's art in front of your art, that's a problem.
I feel like a celebrity is someone who sits and takes pictures with people 'cause they love themselves and how they look and how people look at them. But I just want to be regular and respected for my artistry because music doesn't necessarily have a face.
You go to a show and you know the crowd is there because they like the music, not because everybody else was going. That's a good feeling. You look out there and you know, these are our people.
I'm kind of tired of chasing people, calling out everybody because I always do that. All I can do right now is be the guy to beat everybody else, so there's no more people that they can go and try to run and make fights and situations happen for them that we're allowing.
People have to learn that everybody is the same. If you wake up in the morning, even if you're a movie star, you look like everybody else. The reality is that makeup is there to help. That's what it's for.
What I do try to do is just stay away from other people's work, because they might influence you too much in a level that you don't want to be influenced in. And you don't want to look somebody else, you want to look like yourself.
When I was 15, I didn't think I was the prettiest at all. But then something happened when I was 20-something - I thought, actually, I really like what I look like. Just because I don't look like everybody else doesn't mean that I can't be just as beautiful.
I didn't love David Bowie. Sure, I loved a lot of his songs, like everybody else, and, like everybody else, I had an incarnation of Bowie that I loved best - in my case, the solemn 'art-rock' Bowie of the late Seventies.
I just thought I‘d never look good in what everybody else wore. So there’s no point trying. You just have to do what suits you, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t look like everybody else. Be you. That’s our gift and we’ve got to celebrate that, but it does take ages. I was wracked with self-doubt for years. I get spasms of it even now – I’m not indelibly self-confident.