It's a very obsessive profession that you need to stay obsessed to get anywhere, and it's very easy for us to get obsessed and then nothing else matters. I was reading Somerset Maugham's novella, Moon and Sixpense, about this artist based on Gauguin's life. It was so beautifully written. You must be first rate because second rate you might not survive. If you're an accountant, you'll survive second rate. If you chance it big, you may not get anywhere.

I grew up in Honolulu. It's not the ballet cultural mecca by any stretch of the imagination. People are much more familiar with hula than they are with ballet.

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.

All Asian parents are into your children having a respectable, decent stable job. Acting was unimaginable to my parents.

When you feel so strongly about something and other people feel equally strongly, you have to feel stronger about it in order to succeed.

I don't want to tell people what I make. It's a lot more than I ever dreamed of as a kid. I never think about it.

I went to Indiana University for college for a couple of years where I double majored in dance and journalism, and after my sophomore year there, I went to the San Francisco Ballet school for the summer, but then they offered me a scholarship to stay for the year. That's where I danced after the year they offered me a contract with the company.