In America especially, if you're Chinese and you work at a restaurant, there's a certain connotation among the Chinese immigrant community: It's the first generation that opens restaurants as a way to survive. You open to support your family so your kids can become doctors and lawyers.

Lulu Wang

My goal is, no matter what genre or story, I'll find a personal angle. It doesn't have to be autobiographical, or specifically Asian-American. It has to explore a burning question that I have.

Lulu Wang

There's so little representation of people who look like me behind the camera that it makes you want to say yes to any opportunity out of desperation. It puts you in a situation where you can't make your best work. Diversity for cheap.

Lulu Wang

My father's a diplomat. He speaks Russian.

Lulu Wang

Because if Asian American content is seen as a trend, the way that like leggings are in, then that's not true representation or inclusion. The mainstream doesn't have to worry about that.

Lulu Wang

I made 'The Farewell' for me, for my family, and for other immigrant children, or children of immigrants, who feel caught in-between two worlds.

Lulu Wang

I didn't grow up making coffee. I'm not good at it.

Lulu Wang

I actually am terrified of horror movies. I'm very sensitive. But for me, I get so scared of horror movies that if I know something is coming I'll actually pause the movie and fast forward.

Lulu Wang

My mother always wanted to play an instrument. Her parents never gave her that. Then it got to a point where I'd been playing for 18 years, and to give it up would make me feel guilty. But my parents also knew that realistically, I wasn't going to become a concert pianist.

Lulu Wang

In some ways, every character we write, especially the protagonist, is some version of ourselves, as a writer/director, even if they aren't the same gender.

Lulu Wang

As long as I'm making something from my voice, from my perspective there will be Asian American content because I am the storyteller.

Lulu Wang

Sometimes America is so great because it brings all of us together, but sometimes it can be so limiting because it puts labels on things.

Lulu Wang

I can't speak for everybody, and I don't want to say it for an entire culture, but for me, coming from an immigrant family, it's very difficult to go find your voice, which requires a lot of failure.

Lulu Wang

We all have different aspects of ourselves, and who we are to different people in our lives, at different stages of our lives.

Lulu Wang

If you think about feudal China during times of the emperors, food was a very elevated art form and you had to be really skilled.

Lulu Wang

My grandma, Nai Nai, has had the clothes she wants to be buried prepared since she was like 60. I guess there is an openness to discussing. It's part of life. It's part of the every day.

Lulu Wang

I grew up in Beijing and Beijing roast duck is my favorite. My mom makes it every year for Christmas Eve. How crispy the skin is is how good a duck restaurant is.

Lulu Wang

Writing is a type of therapy for me. I'm always trying to break down what happened, and why I felt a certain way.

Lulu Wang

When people finance a movie, they have their own ideas and have things they want to change.

Lulu Wang

Whereas in America we are so fearful of mortality, we don't want to talk about it, we don't think about it, and in many ways we treat elderly people as invisible because they are a constant reminder of our own mortality. We put them away and put them in retirement homes so we don't want to deal with that.

Lulu Wang

My mother and my father are both very funny people, and they're both artistic in their own right. Oftentimes, we get very dramatic about things, but we also laugh really hard.

Lulu Wang