Korean Americans

"Awkwafina induces the panic attacks and Nora takes them, [she has] a kind of abject confidence that people outgrow in adulthood."

"Even though I went to Exeter and Yale, and I enjoyed all the trappings of those places, I think at the same time – and maybe it's because I'm an immigrant kid and not white – there was always this other consciousness; that is, I was conscious of everything that was going on. And I was observing. Some people just ARE, because the temperature of the water is exactly the temperature of their body…But my temperature is always off, a little bit. And I have to note it. And I always did, from a very young age. I don't know if that's my character or upbringing or both."

"I think back to particular librarians when I was in elementary and middle school. My parents were immigrants, and my mother didn’t really speak English. Basically, I was raised in the library. Those librarians and a few teachers in high school and college and even graduate school gave me not just knowledge but also encouragement and, sometimes, a reality check."

"I grew up in an Asian American family on the East Coast. I have a whole network of friends there. But the West Coast is definitely more Asian American-inflected. Personally, culturally, artistically, there’s a draw here that’s different than on the East Coast. There’s a whole new added layer here that I enjoy."

"Well the voices, for me especially in first person story-telling, the voice is of primary importance. And the voice reflects and articulates that particular character and what that particular character is interested in and troubled by, and so the voices are different because the people are different. It seems to be an obvious thing to say but it has to be said…"

"One of the things that's so frustrating about it is that people who are Asian-American and who are non Asian-American assume that sometimes. And I think sometimes the implication is that “Oh, you really didn't have to create that, that was just something that you recounted.” You know, that recounted stories are much more easy and simple to write than stuff that's completely made up. And I think that's one of the things that sometimes, particularly ethnic American writers face because they write about people who look like them and then people automatically assume that it's people who are them or someone in their family…"

"Almost all of western literature is about talk…There's this great line in Beckett: keep talking, you're winning. And somehow I wanted to subvert that; the need to constantly express and put your verbal and psychological stamp on everything…You don't always have to talk."

"I've always been compelled by the notions of context and individuality. This interest has been expressed in different ways across my books, but I think I've been consistently fascinated the question of persons who find themselves in a context that either fits too well or doesn't fit at all, by persons who feel they exist simultaneously inside and outside of a cultural or political space. It’s no surprise that as an immigrant I've always been extra conscious of this interplay."

"Little piggy no no little piggy go home!"

"Nothing like washing helicopter dicks to make your day a little brighter."

"A lot of people try to boil down creation to just one thing and "what are you gonna do next" as if there's always a ladder to climb and it's like, the ladder is what you make for yourself, right?"

""You got a stinky butt butt." Wow, thanks, that's really appreciated. I can think of a lot of logical explainations for why I got that text, like sure, maybe someone's kid got the message, but also, I know people in my life that would just text me that out of the blue, so I'm not gonna chalk it up to a kid automatically doing that."

"If I can't powerwash a cat, I'm out."

"And now it says 'press B to blow.' Really?"

"…Why are you just there?"

"Okay, that thing is gone. I think, I hope—" [ROAR-ing noise] "NO, IT'S NOT! AHHHHH!"

"Damnit, I turned up your mike! Why did I turn it up?!"

"[when he finally attacks the child] "No - aw, no, no, no! Aw, no! Auh, I feel so bad! But remember, guys: this is just a game…" [nerves himself, then puts the child out of his misery, to put it bluntly; palms his forehead in shame] "Nhhhh… That's awful!" [turns to find the ghost woman standing behind him again] "Jeezus! Stop that, lady!""

"Jeezus, lady, you need to stop that right now. I do not take kindly to that…! You're being very creepy…!"

"…Dammit, where the hell are these guys? They're nowhere to be found."

"[when the ghost woman appears behind him] "WWWWhoa-kay, back up there, lady…""

"Nonononono…! You don't see anything…"

"What is that? Is that the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the ?" [gets closer] "Oh, no. I saw that thing; it looked like a giant, white box-head."

"Aauuh, I don't wanna kill the kid!" … "Aw, that's so sad! I'm not gonna kill him. Well, I'm not gonna kill him first, anyway."

"That scared the buhjeezus outta me!"

"Oh my god…! That was incredibly loud!"

"Good god! Don't do that to me! I'm not in a disposition to handle that - wait a minute. …Uh… Lady…? Are you… Are you that lady, but in ghost -" [Cell phone in background] "Shut up; I don't have time for this!"

"Oh my god, that is so morbid!"

"'Press Control to calm yourself'." [breathes and presses Control key] "Oh, that just crouches me. How does that calm myself?"

"'Oh my god, you stabbed her! You killed her! HELP! HE KILLED HER! HE STABBED HER WITH A KITCHEN KNIFE!' …I'm very sorry."

"'Get Back And Do Your Job'. How 'bout you go fornicate yourself with a rake?"

"[begins the game; gets startled by the enemy character flying away from him] "Okay—UH! …Well, that startled the crap outta me.""

"Oh, if that blue bastard, is just stickin' around -" [find a candle stand, which startles him] *gasp* "...That's new!"

"Why is this good? Why bruh... this good?" [Ao Oni bursts in.] "AAGH - ! …What the hell?! How was I supposed to do anything?! What was that?!"

"If there was just - just - a purple monster sitting in a corner, waiting for me to walk over it, I would shit myself dry. I would absolutely lose all control of my bowels!"

"[after finally pushing his first chair; pauses] "...OH, COME ON! How was I supposed to [know I had to] do that?! You son of a bitch!""

"[to his phone] "Shaddup!" [groaning, then laughing] "...It's my mom!""

"…Well! Glad you're being so polite about this. You're very civil—oh my god! I didn't blo[ck]… I didn't mean to look down! Ugh! They're naked! They are sooo naked! Oh my god!"

"That guy was, like, in full body armor! How'd they kill him?"

"! ...What was that?! What the hell was that?! What did you just throw at me?! ...[I] wasn't ready for that! Jeezus! Calm down!"

"I often liken the process of physics research to solving a jigsaw puzzle. As we put together pieces to form patches, a certain image of the overall picture emerges, but until the game is sufficiently progressed, we are not quite sure. I feel much the same way about the wealth of signs for new particles. We have patches that have been put together, but we are not quite sure how all pieces will fit together into a coherent whole. There are also certain pieces which do not seem to fit into any patches at all. For the most part, the experimental findings have not been completely unexpected, but there have been certain surprises that I, for one, had not foreseen. This is what makes particle physics exciting and tantalizing. At moments of despair and frustration, I feel as though somebody has scrambled two boxes of jigsaw puzzles for me to put together."

"Lee's involvement with gauge theories dated back to 1964. He was concerned about the fact that superconductors appear to provide a counterexample to the general theorem, which requires that spontaneous symmetry breaking is always accompanied with massless spin-zero bosons. With Klein, he wrote an article suggesting that the same might occur in relativistic theories. It was soon realized that this is indeed the case, provided the broken symmetry is a gauge symmetry, as it is in a superconductor."

"For a viewer to think the custodian was trying to break free is the exact opposite of what the scene was supposed to convey. There is nothing gained from that kind of ambiguity. Ambiguity is not desirable or meaningful if it confuses an issue that is meant to be clear. This is the challenge of making a film that communicates but doesn't talk down: a lot of viewers and studio execs (and directors) hold that ANY ambiguity is the result of the filmmaker's failure. I disagree, but I also hold that, in order for ambiguity to be effective, certain things NEED to be unambiguous. For example, if it wasn't clear that Judy on the stage is the same character as Judy who'd invited Aeon to the Hostess' lair, then that's just bad execution. If the episode had been finished and seen in a version say, where we don't see her face drawn correctly, and viewers weren't sure it was the same character, they may wonder about things irrelevant to the story's themes, such as "do the custodians alter the appearance of their hosts", or "Trevor is masquerading a different person who is playing the role of Judy on the stage", etc, all of which does not help the story. Thinking that the custodian had a will of its own and wanted to break free is the same type of undesired speculation."

"People often repeat the fallacy that "film is a passive medium". The statement is usually elaborated like this: "When I read a story in a book, I have to use my imagination to conjure up what the characters look like, the sound of their voices, the appearance of their surroundings, the house, the landscape. When I see a movie, those things are all nailed down for me, so I don't feel as involved." What the person is describing are the most obvious aspects of a given story, that is, its physical properties. They are, in fact, the least interesting and least important components of a story. I do not read books in order to imagine the physical appearance of things."

"A good film is one that requires the viewer to create, through an orchestration of impressions, the meaning of its events. It is, in the end, our ability to create meaning out of the raw experience of life that makes us human. It is the exercise of our faculty to discover meaning which is the purpose of art. The didactic imparting of moral or political messages is emphatically not the purpose of art -- that is what we call propaganda."

"It's a universal tendency in films to be more about sex and violence than the real world is, but I would pose the opposite question: Why are so many characters that you see on TV so desexualized? A lot of them seem to be completely asexual — especially animated characters — and it implies that those characters are normal. The characters in Aeon Flux are normal people who have normal sex lives and appetites."

"Regarding the doll in the Purge, since it's one of my favorite moments in the series: The Custodians are the physical embodiment of a very vaporous notion -- human conscience. Does conscience really exist, or is it just a way of convincing ourselves that a center for moral judgment resides within us, thus lending our judgments a natural authority? As always, Trevor prefers to provide a tangible solution. He can't tolerate uncertainty. Whether it is real or not, Trevor understands the usefulness of the belief in conscience as a tool for practical ends, the improvement of society. In the end, the doll which emerges from the Custodian reveals to us that Trevor's artificial conscience, like the classical notion, is no more than a flimsy gimmick, a parlor trick, a plaything of the mind powered by a circular process. (Advocating the existence of conscience usually involves an appeal to our conscience). Notice that Trevor himself winds up the toy while in the train earlier in the episode."