Our parents decided not to teach us Chinese. It was an era when they felt we would be better off if we didn't have that complication.

When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family.

My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the university as a playground.

I though about what death is, what a loss is. A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal over. A scar. The idea occurred to me there on the site. Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass would heal it. As if you cut open the rock and polished it.

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.

I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the teachers. This one chemistry teacher, she liked hanging out. I liked making explosives. We would stay after school and blow things up.

In art or architecture your project is only done when you say it's done. If you want to rip it apart at the eleventh hour and start all over again, you never finish. I was one of those crazy creatures.