"I decided that not talking is like a litmus test for a real friend. You can just sit there and be. Not always be filling up the air with words"

“In an odd way I thought I was lowering the bar for myself, in saying, well, I'll make a pop album. But in a way it's kind of harder to make pop music. It's like the more abstract you get with music, you get into that emperor's new clothes thing, where you can go anywhere, and just claim that your audience may not be prepared to go with you. But with pop music, I think everybody understands the form, everybody knows what it's meant to do. So I would say it's harder to write that kind of music.”

Source : Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

“When I got to college, I was intending to study film. But I found that my brain was feeling mushy, so I took a few math classes. I started doing really well at them, and solving equations was this, like, drug rush.”

“Oh may He look on us with love and pity and then we shall be able to do anything He wishes us to do, no matter how difficult to accomplish or painful to our feeling.”

“I honestly just love being in my studio working on music. That's all the inspiration I need. And I don't write with an end result in mind, I just write for the simple love of writing.”

“Data can't speak for itself; it's up to you to give it a voice. Try to speak truthfully.”

“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.”

“After twenty years and thirty stories, thirteen pieces were finally selected and the collection was born. So far, the blurbs from [authors] Maxine Hong Kingston, Gish Jen, Robert Olen Butler, Oscar Hijuelos and others, have been most encouraging.”

Source : "‘Birds of Paradise Lost’: A Conversation With Author Andrew Lam". Interview with Anna Challet, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 5, 2013.

“I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth.”

Source : Baruch College Class Interview, www.baruch.cuny.edu. 2003.