I like to say, Chop sueys the biggest culinary joke that one culture has ever played on another, because chop suey, if you translate into Chinese, means tsap sui, which, if you translate back, means odds and ends.

My siblings and I are known as ABCs, American-born Chinese.

I think if you create well balanced characters that are well represented, boys and girls relate to them whether they're boys or girls.

Let your heart beat for music. Don't be a DJ for the wrong reasons, do it because you have a passion for it.

In deference to American traditions, my family put our oven to rare use at Thanksgiving during my childhood, with odd roast-turkey experiments involving sticky-rice stuffing or newfangled basting techniques that we read about in magazines.

We might be shifting away from a Eurocentric view of the United States into something that's much more multicultural, multinational, and Chinese food is just one slice of that.

If I learned one thing, it is that self-doubt is one of the most destructive forces. It makes you defensive instead of open, reactive instead of active. Self-doubt is consuming and cruel. And my hope today is that we can all collectively agree to ban it. . . . Think to the moments of your life when you forgot to doubt yourself. When you were so inspired that you were just living and creating and working. Pay attention to those moments because they're trying to reach you through those lenses of doubt and trying to show you your potential.