Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's not at all my objective to become an Asian-American star.
As an Asian American at pilot season you take whatever there is.
Growing up as a South Asian-American, I didn't have any female role models.
The Asian-American kids I meet respond to a democracy in the vulgarity of my roles.
No matter what happens, we couldn't let people say Asian-American actors can't act.
I'm very humbled and honored. I'm very thankful to the Asian-American Community for all their support!
Being the only Asian-American in the State Legislature, I've had no choice but to reach across the aisle.
Personally, sometimes I'll lament the journey of an Asian-American actor, walking into audition rooms in 1999.
Some useful advice for all of my Asian-American brothers and sisters - never go paint-balling with a Vietnam veteran.
When I was finishing 'Now You See Me 2,' I remember thinking about exploring the Asian-American identity side of my brain.
I'm a chairman on the Board of Governors for the East-West Players, the longest-running Asian-American theater company in America.
I never really thought of myself as an Asian-American cartoonist, any more than I thought of myself as a cartoonist who wears glasses.
I worked at ILM the same time Masi Oka was there. Who would have thought that two Asian-American nerds from ILM would be on hit shows?
To be honest, I'm really into folk music, and I love Big Phony. I like Priscilla Ahn, and yeah, I really support Asian-American artists.
Coming out of college into the draft, being Asian-American and being from Harvard, that's not going to be an advantage because of stereotypes.
With the first novel, I was concerned I would be pigeon-holed as an Asian-American writer, and the book would be labeled for Asian-Americans only.
Danny Chung in 'Veep' is a really unique, very anti-stereotypical role for an Asian-American actor, and being able to play that has been super fun.
A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising.
Growing up, I thought I was white. It didn't occur to me I was Asian-American until I was studying abroad in Denmark and there was a little bit of prejudice.
The narrative needs to change. Asian-American actresses don't want to be the damsels in distress anymore. We don't want to be saved, especially by a white man.
It's weird for me to say I'm lucky when I can't go into a bookstore and have more than five choices if I want to read something about Asian-American characters.
I've gotten scholarships from the Asian-American Directors Guild of America society and things like that, and those things helped me, even if I didn't realize how much.
It's funny - when I started acting, I didn't know I was going to be talking about Asian-American issues so much. You know what, though? It just comes with the territory, being ethnic.
I think there's a misconception that all Asian-American experiences are the same. My experiences with my family and the way they wanted me to know my culture are not the same as others.
My goal is, no matter what genre or story, I'll find a personal angle. It doesn't have to be autobiographical, or specifically Asian-American. It has to explore a burning question that I have.
I feel that its important for me to be out there and to represent the face. At the same time, for me as an individual, I think the Asian-American face can be crowded with the American identity.
I ended up going into the Master's program for Asian-American studies at UCLA, in part because I was passionate about it, but also because I wanted to keep acting in the theater group that we founded.
I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.
I always felt that just being an actor is difficult. Being an Asian-American actor doesn't make it more difficult. I see it as an opportunity and a chance to help other Asian-American actors coming along.
I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could.
More than anything, I'm an American kid, and my music reflects that more so than being an Asian-American. I think it's important but also something that can detrimental to your career if celebrated too much.
As an Asian-American actor, I believe it is important to never settle for the status quo. I feel a responsibility to do everything in my power to create positive perceptions of Asian Americans through my work.
I don't like when an Asian-American actor says, 'I'm entering this business to change Hollywood.' It feels like the wrong reason - I would prefer they entered the business for artistic reasons, because they need to do it.
Growing up in America, I experienced two puberties. The first opened me up to the possibilities of adulthood. The second reinforced that for someone like me - an immigrant, a minority, an Asian-American - there were limits.
The feedback for 'P.S. I Still Love You' has been pretty amazing. To have written this story about this family with Asian-American characters and be so embraced is really incredible for me as a writer as well as a person of color.
Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino, Russell Crowe - these leading men. These are the ones I grew up with. And Hugh Jackman. I love everything that these guys are doing. It's kind of been my mission to be an Asian-American version of that.
I'd like to see more Asian-American roles where the ethnicity of the character can be swapped to another. We can, of course, play the stereotypical ninja, the martial arts master, the accountant, the doctor, but we can be more than that!
While Donald Trump is busy insulting one group after another, Hillary Clinton understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. Yes. We become stronger when black and white, Latino, Asian-American, Native American - when all of us stand together.
I have minor characters who are Asian-American, and I've been using them throughout my career, but they've never taken center stage, they've never been really powerful, they've never expressed some of the experiences I had growing up in the U.S. Johnny Tam is the first one.
I know certainly that my parents sacrificed a lot to come to America, and to... start a new life for their family and their future families. At least with first-generation Asian-American immigrants, parents put so much risk in work and to provide the best for their children.
For the longest time, the Asian-American community would talk about representation, but I think it's also about the freedom to really shape, create, and explore issues that are important to us, regardless of whether it's positive or negative, as long as it's three dimensional.
I have hidden my race for 22 books. I have hidden behind my married name, which is very Caucasian, because I didn't feel safe coming out with it. I didn't feel that the market would really accept me. I think I felt it's time to start bringing in an Asian-American point of view.
When I arrived at the Capitol in 2007 to take my oath as a new member of the U.S. House of Representatives, I had the privilege of filling the seat held for so long and so well by my friend Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress. I was so grateful to her.
Working on 'Fresh Off the Boat' has been really enlightening to me because it's made me actually think about the roles that Asians and Asian-American women have played in media. Not because I didn't think it was important before, but because before, I was really focused on just paying my rent.
Seriously, how many times do you see Asian-American characters that have an actual family, feelings? You don't see them love and be sad and have all the human emotions. I think that 'Gilmore Girls' is one of the very, very few where we were offered a chance to explore these characters multidimensionally.
The more visibility, the more opportunities for Asian-American actors to play great roles. It goes to the studios opening up roles they might not have considered Asian actors for. The talent is there. I don't think there needs to be one superstar, but having more roles open up, that's the way changes happen.
The color and the diversity dies out, and it gets whiter and whiter, and that's in any field. There is also this idea that there can only be one gay person or there can only be one Asian-American woman in the office, and so it also perpetuates itself where we are isolated, especially the more successful we get.
My brother often complains to me about the 'angry Asian male' in the United States. As a female, I haven't encountered this, but Asian-American men are angry. They're angry because, for so many years, they've been neglected as sex symbols. Asian women have it much easier, I think; we're accepted into various circles.
My work has always been controversial within certain segments of the Asian-American community. This is a community that is generally not represented well at all on the stage, in the media, etc. So on those few occasions when something comes along, everybody feels obligated to make sure that it represents his own point of view.