"Specificity is what makes good storytelling, and good storytelling is what makes money, and making money is then what encourages new producers to invest in different stories about Asians."

"I don't have the best family life. I'm not going to have a sob story and be like, my parents abandoned me, because they didn't. But they also are not that present. When I'm alone, I'm alone. I don't have anybody to call, and so I have to create meaning from myself."

"I wish reporters were more in tune to the difference between the Asian experience and the Asian-American experience. I think often they lump the two together and think that when I talk about Asian-American narratives that they can cite Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Mulan as proof of concept when it's a different experience."

"Make sure your work is never results-oriented. The result is a byproduct of the work, in a way."

"Listening to an underserved population is how you begin to understand them and serve them better."

"I don't fear being outspoken. The only thing I fear is losing my sense of integrity or losing sight of the values on which I guide my life. So I don't think it's particularly brave or unusual for me to speak out."

"I believe, behind what’s called “narrative therapy,” which uses storytelling to distance a person from their experiences in order to tell a different story about their lives. Because we often are the life stories that we tell ourselves about who we are; we create the scaffolding that we hang our narratives upon. Is this a treatment? I think so…"

"I do want to be careful not to glamorise mental illness when it comes to creativity because more often than not it actually tends to inhibit creativity…"

"I often say that medicine seems great if you have a broken arm, but if you end up with some more mysterious ailment, or a confusing autoimmune disorder, then you will become obsessed with the color of the coconut water you drink. The more lost I became in terms of my own health, my own mental illness and chronic illness, whether that was named late-stage Lyme disease or dysautonomia, or whether that was named “the mysterious autoimmune disorder that nobody could figure out,” the more I was searching…"

"I have been taking these photographs as I am dead, and then I look back at these photographs to re-experience what it was like, as someone who experienced themselves as a dead person. And they’re the same. It’s very much the same experience, just one is visual and one is more verbal. Both are ways to get through a very difficult experience, and they’re also ways to remember it."

"Characters, even though they’re minor, shouldn’t be a device. No person should be a device to move the plot along. That’s when you run into problems with stereotypes. I strive, in my journalism and my fiction, to make characters as complex and complicated as they are in real life…"

"I think the American dream is still what gets us out of bed every day, that life can be better…"

"I think often, especially with immigrant narratives, or narratives from marginalized communities, there is room for only one narrative or that there’s only stereotypes or statistics. A River of Stars does kind of show that we do have different histories, dreams, flaws, and ambitions, and I hope people are able to really see the fullness of the humanity of each character, whether they’re major or minor."

"I come up with a concept and might doodle a little bit to get some ideas flowing, but I mostly write and take notes. I write an outline. In a way, I feel like I can make the art fit the story that needs to be told, so I start with the story first."

"By the time I get to coloring it’s usually the last step and I’m a little creatively tapped out. So I don’t spend a ton of time building a concept for the coloring, but I do love seeing things take final form. A lot of it is thinking about the scene, what the mood is, and how to light it. By that point I’ve spent enough time with the book I already know what I want to achieve when I get to it."

"Frances and Sebastian accept each other right from the get go, and the world the characters live in is one that is willing to change. I think you buy it because it’s wrapped in this fairy tale theme and playing off these Disney Princess movie tropes. It would be a lot harder if I went for a strict historical theme."

"I wrote this book for my teenage self, so it’s all about themes that were important to my young self: questioning your identity and gender, but also your creative aspirations and the person you want to be."

"Fiction fosters empathy among readers by putting them in a position to consider deeply someone’s history, hopes, and ambitions…"

"I have to say though it’s made it easier for white people to seek me out because I am half-white to ask me what they would be afraid to ask a mono-racial Asian American. I generally have intriguing, sometimes difficult, conversations with people about race…"

"In any professional setting, I’m a fish out of water on many levels, not just racially and culturally but also in the work I do, which involves many artistic disciplines…"

"I’m the most peaceful when I go to Hawaii because I fit in there as a biracial or “hapa” person. No one there questions my Asian-ness, and in fact, I feel my ethnicity is embraced and accepted…"

"While I’m proud to take risks artistically in my work, at the same time, I’ve had older generations of Taiwanese and Taiwanese Americans who have chastised me for peddling (a phrase I hate) “pain-porn” because I have told my mom’s war-torn story. What a hurtful thing to say to someone who is speaking from the heart and basically laying out the facts of a person’s life. I’ve also had white Americans shaking their fingers at me saying “You’re a bad daughter!”…"