People are funny. They often don't mean to be, and that's what makes it even more endearing.

With a film, things constantly have to go up in the story, and you're constantly putting pressure on the main character. It allows to go really deep into what its relationship is.

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.

If you don't want the nickname, don't live up to it.

I'm aware of what I am, but I focus so much on myself as a musician and as an artist that I don't even notice that I'm the only female on a festival bill. I'm just like "oh I'm playing this festival."I haven't been very deeply involved in this greater outreach because my approach to equality is integration. I'm not into separatism, or an all-female festival. It's good and empowering but it doesn't allow for the bigger picture to get accomplished. We all need to be at the same festival - that's always been my approach.

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.

Within the model minority rhetoric, Asian Americans are represented as “good” minorities and African Americans are represented as “bad” minorities. Here, the achievements of Asian Americans are used to discipline African Americans. As model minorities, Asian Americans achieved the status of “honorary Whites”. Again it is important to point out that the honorary whiteness of Asian Americans was granted at the expense of Blacks. It is also significant that as “honorary Whites,” Asian Americans do not have the actual privileges associated with “real” whiteness.