I need my comedy to offend. That's my personal views.

I get called Harold the most. I think maybe 'Harold & Kumar' fans don't know my name, and 'Star Trek' fans do know my name... Harold fans are vocal!

Our species likes being social.

I write, and I sing, and I play a little guitar. I mean, it's tiny. Ba-dump-bum!

What's impressed me about 'Star Trek' fans is how many generations they span and how many nations they represent. They are all over the place.

I accept what people say. I don't have time to dissect it.

As long as the rent's getting paid, you don't think about getting out of the game.

That's what it is: a 'Harold & Kumar' movie is a romance between two best friends.

Movies may be as close to a document of our national culture as there is; they're supposed to represent what we believe ourselves to be. So when you don't see yourself at all - or see yourself erased - that hurts.

It just seemed hedonistic when I first started acting. It was a pleasurable thing. But as I look back on it now, I understand that it was a journey of the self for me.

I don't know what the next frontier is, but good comedy should put its toe into taboo waters. You have to transgress a little bit, and that area shifts with culture and with the year.

You know, I always root for the older athlete. I root for the second album. I root for solo careers after the rock star breaks the band apart.

That's a huge part of being a human being: looking for love and finding a partner in this world. When you constantly play characters who don't have that life, it feels incomplete and not totally human.

You're trying to grow up, and you don't want to be like your parents, and that gets mixed up with being Korean... They brought their values from Korea, and I accepted them because I didn't know anything more. But as I grow older, I feel more Korean every year; it's very strange.

When I saw 'My Fair Lady,' I was surprised at how mean and misogynistic Henry was. Maybe that's why it's dropping out of public consciousness.

The message of 'Star Trek,' if there is one, seems to be that we should try to live up to the very best that we're capable of.

When I first started acting in college, at Cal, the thing that I loved about acting was not being onstage but going into rehearsals. The thing, as I look back on it now, that I was most attracted to, was that I felt like I'd found my family. It was just a bunch of loonies.

I have a few go-to moves like jazz hands, shake the booty, stupid eyes. It was once a mating ritual, but now it's all about looking silly and making the kids smile.

Asians narratively in shows are insignificant. They're the cop or the waitress or whatever it is. You see them in the background.

Early on, I played a Chinese delivery person, and even that, which was very innocuous, felt like I was somehow betraying myself. I felt very self-conscious on set doing that role, with a crew that was almost entirely white.

Typically, actors overplay jargon or toss it away in an extravagant display of casualness. Real people hit the important parts hard.

'Star Trek' seems to be an appeal to our better nature, the side of ourselves that works toward peace and cooperation and understanding and knowledge and yearns to seek out knowledge rather than the side that wants to divide and control one another.

I would love to do Shakespeare, either onstage or on film.

I am a little curmudgeonly about new media.

I don't like when an Asian-American actor says, 'I'm entering this business to change Hollywood.' It feels like the wrong reason - I would prefer they entered the business for artistic reasons, because they need to do it.

With acting, you are a small part of the creative process, and sometimes it is hard to feel like you are making an impact.

I never saw 'Home Alone.'

I try to take roles that don't fall within the parameters of any Asian stereotype.

The goal of Asians in the arts is plurality of roles. I've always been hindered by me over-thinking what is a stereotype and what isn't.

For a while, I was feeling like I was always playing characters that weren't specifically Korean or specifically Asian, even - that they were characters who were originally written white, and then they would cast me. And I used to consider that a badge of honor because that meant I had avoided stereotypes.

As an immigrant, I learned by watching other people.

I got sort of sick of seeing Asians being the blank, bland real estate agent or something. I didn't care. It didn't mean anything to me.

I've played roles that aren't expected of an Asian.

I wanted to do 'Manzanar' because I'd never done anything like it before. The spoken word there is between a drama and an essay, and I'd never worked in concert with an orchestra.

There is a real Harold Lee.

Most people deal with grief in an awkward way, and that can be funny.

Ninety per cent of being a parent is just being present and available.

The worst thing for a kid is to move around and switch schools, but as an actor, you go from job to job, meeting strangers and becoming very close right away. I've become adept at that.

Just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's real.

Because I sidestepped all the stereotypical roles, in a way I've made a career out of not being Asian - a lot of my roles weren't written as Asian - so there's an impulse in me that wants to take a U-turn and play a very grounded, real Asian character, maybe an immigrant.

I think Hollywood acts like followers of culture and is constantly seeking to follow trends.

Actors are supposed to be these runaways that get in a covered wagon filled with hats and tambourines and go from town to town making people smile.

It's hard in America as a writer of color, an actor of color, not to get caught up in race and culture. But you're also supposed to be able to write characters and scenes in a way where it's just a matter of fact, a component.

I'm not a good improv-er, which is what a lot of comedic actors are really good at. I have failed miserably when I've been asked to improvise.

For me, the most interesting thing is longevity and sustaining a career, because that's what's truly difficult.

I'm not a natural-born actor. So it's been a very slow learning curve for me.

There was a while where every role I was getting offered was extremely noble - like the judge or the kindly nurse.

'Lost' was a phenomenon, like Elvis.

Sometimes I feel like I don't dream big enough.

When I started acting... the community was largely Chinese-American or Japanese-American, so even then I felt like a minority in the minority.