You should be having more fun in high school, exploring things because you want to explore them and learning because you love learning-not worrying about competition.

I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode.

OK, it was black, it was below grade, I was female, Asian American, young, too young to have served. Yet I think none of the opposition in that sense hurt me.

To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want to do is incredible freedom.

All my work is much more peaceful than I am.

You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things.

I probably have fundamentally antisocial tendencies. I never took one extracurricular activity. I just failed utterly at that level. Part of me still rebels against that.