Even though I'm not privileged in the money world, I'm privileged in other ways: I had greater access to education, I can travel, etc. It's the same with writing: the freedom to move in and out of different places, of different realms of existence, of different life forms.

You have to experiment with different mediums and things around you [making art].

Art is really about how you capture different things you see around you and bring them into forms and words and shapes and meaning.

Every day you are bombarded by so many different things. When you sit down to process everything, it can become interesting visually. You can incorporate a lot of those things that you internalize.

It's hard to choose the right word, the right line. This Body Mystery is a small book, but it took me over ten years.

Sometimes I fantasize about learning to write in Khmer. Because if I could write in Khmer, my perspective would be very different, because I'm both an outsider and insider and I see the writing in a different way. My description would be different from, say, a local writer.

Often when people tell their story, they talk about their strengths and resiliency. It's really about their determination and their aspiration to survive and live.