"I’ve always said that it really bothers me that so much of Asian representation in cinema has been people running away from their Asian-ness to find love elsewhere…"

“…If you start thinking about representation too much—and you think about what movie should exist for an Asian-American person, and for an Asian-American male, or what you would like to see an Asian-American male doing on TV or in movies, even though that’s a legitimate thing to think about—it clouds my ability to go, “Oh, that’s just a fun thing. I’d like to throw myself into that situation”...”

“On a political level, I just found that I was more excited by what my skill-set could bring to film and television. Asian theater has stretched the boundaries a little bit, but at the time, was much more involved in what I thought was an older form of expression. It was much more about identity plays, explaining who we were as Asian Americans through dramas. And that didn't interest me as much. I was interested in people who weren't going to theater, and reaching them. That always excited me more, and to this day, theater, though on a formal level is the ideal place for an actor, on some political level, I find it frustrating that theatergoers are mostly rich -- maybe that's unfair -- mostly white…”

“I’ve spent my life trying to figure out what Asian-ness means…but you know, I really gotta figure out what whiteness means. We all have to figure out what it means, apparently, for our survival.”