The background - your own history - is way more important than what you can achieve as a professional.

When I was born, there was a very isolated idea of what it meant to be a man or a woman, and you belonged to one gender or the other.

Everybody in Spain is sick of me. But in America, there's curiosity about the new kid on the block who doesn't speak English very well. The attention makes me feel vulnerable, which is something I hadn't felt in a while. But I like it.

I do a job and am lucky enough to do a job that I love, but it is a hard one. I'm not saying it is as hard as working in a coal mine, but it is still difficult in a different way. Sometimes you have to go through very strong emotional journeys and then come back to yourself. And that can be difficult to control.

Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy.

David Lynch is my friend, and I love his movies and his art and his music. Few things make me happier than working with him.

I've got more creative control when I do music.

At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture.