Eddie Huang Quotes

Of course, my pops put chili oil in it immediately, but I wanted to taste the broth: intense, deep, and mind-numbing. It was one of those bites that make you think maybe, just maybe, your taste buds carry a cognitive key that can open something in your mind. Like the first time I heard Lauryn Hill's voice scratch over "Killing Me Softly," I felt that I just had a mental breakthrough via sound; there has to be something like that with taste. It was then and there that I realized, you can tell a story without words, just soup. ~ Eddie Huang

I think my mom is manic, but Chinese people don't believe in psychologists. We just drink more tea when things go bad. Sometimes I agree; I think we're all over diagnosed. ~ Eddie Huang

I don't want to get burned when I'm cooking. To avoid getting hit when pan-frying, I stand far away and use chopsticks that are almost two feet long. I learned it from my mom, who does the same thing. ~ Eddie Huang

It wasn't much to most kids. I mean, I was basically getting recognized for being straight dogshit, ignoring that I was straight dogshit, and doing anything in my power just to maintain my dogshittiness. I think on Urban Dictionary that's the definition for insanity - or a Michael Bay film. ~ Eddie Huang

I'm convinced that frats are the beginning of the end for most of the people who end up running the world. It teaches them to give up individuality, independence, and even their paper for acceptance. ~ Eddie Huang

You can't convince yourself! You either believe or you don't believe." (28)

"She say you ask weird questions, but I say you're student, you supposed to ask! Her job to answer! I say you're lazy, if student ask, you answer!"
"Yeah! She told me my real great-grandparents are these white people named Adan and Eve!"
"Bullshit! But hey, Ciao Wen, be smart. Why you argue with her about that? You know they believe this stuff, just let them believe."
"But she told me I was going to Hell if I didn't believe and told me to ask God into my heart!"
""Ha, ha, yeah, she told me, too, think she do something soo good to help you. Whatever. You know it's lies, let those idiots believe. Just focus on real school. Don't be stupid and fight them, you'll lose." (30) ~ Eddie Huang

Why leave a country when you're on top? Whether it was another communist scare or the even greener pastures in America, no one ever gives me a straight answer. (The only thing anyone can agree on is that they still miss the island.) ~ Eddie Huang

I don't think people in America understand race, and how deep the hooks of whiteness there are in our consciousness. ~ Eddie Huang

To this day, I wake up at times, look in the mirror, and just stare, obsessed with the idea that the person I am in my head is something entirely different than what everyone else sees. That the way I look will prevent me from doing the things I want; that there really are sneetches with stars and I'm not one of them. I touch my face, I feel my skin, I check my color every day, and I swear it all feels right. But then someone says something and that sense of security and identity is gone before I know it. ~ Eddie Huang

I gave up trying to find friends at college and befriended dead people between the margins. ~ Eddie Huang

I like being on camera, performing, seeing what people have in common. ~ Eddie Huang

If my mom was made, you'd hear wild and crazy Chinese. If it was my dad, he got his white man voice on. ~ Eddie Huang

The reason we use all natural, hormone-free, antibiotic-free Berkshire pork belly, beef, and chicken is that it's the right thing to do. ~ Eddie Huang

When I feel off, I read the 'Tao Te Ching' to get my equilibrium right. I started reading it in the eleventh grade. ~ Eddie Huang

I don't believe you need to shout out the farm, the name of the chicken, or all that other bullshit on the menu because it should simply be the standard that we serve all-natural meat. ~ Eddie Huang

I'll always be Chinese first. It probably isn't politically correct to say or something that the majority understands; I can change my shoes, I can swap my passport, but, I'll always have this face. ~ Eddie Huang

I don't do coupons or Reeboks. Life is too short to half-step. ~ Eddie Huang

I want everybody to run at the same speed as me. But some people are more conscientious, they think more and they plan more. And they're more careful. ~ Eddie Huang

Xiang wei is the character a good dish has when it's robust, flavorful, and balanced but still maintains a certain light quality. That flavor comes, lingers on your tongue, stays long enough to make you crave it, but just when you think you have it figured out, it's gone. Timing is everything. Soup dumplings, sitcoms, one-night stands - good ones leave you wanting more. ~ Eddie Huang

If you like our food, great, but don't come tell me you're gonna clean it up, refine it, or elevate it because it's not necessary or possible. We don't need fucking food missionaries to cleanse our palates. What we need are opportunities outside kitchens and cubicles. ~ Eddie Huang

We play into the definitions and stereotypes others impose on us and accept the model-minority myth, thinking it's positive, but it's a trap just like any stereotype. They put a piece of model-minority cheese between the metal jaws of their mousetrap, but we're lactose intolerant anyway! We can't even eat the cheese. ~ Eddie Huang

There was an individual inside me that wasn't Chinese, that wasn't American, that wasn't Orlando. Just a kid trying to get the fuck out, tell his story, and arrange the world how it made sense to him. ~ Eddie Huang

When they beat that dream out of me, I said I'd be a sportscaster on ESPN and I'll never forget what my father said: "They'll never let someone with a face like you on television." To this day, I wake up at times, look in the mirror, and just stare, obsessed with the idea that the person I am in my head is something entirely different than what everyone else sees. ~ Eddie Huang

New York felt to me like what America should be - a representation of the world in this small pocket. ~ Eddie Huang

I choose to be American, I choose to live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I choose to have Puerto Rican/Jewish neighbors, and I choose to maintain my Chinese identity. ~ Eddie Huang

I want to prove you don't need to have academic syntax to be intelligent. ~ Eddie Huang

don't pick on people who were already being picked on. ~ Eddie Huang

For the first time, I ate with a bunch of other Taiwanese-Chinese kids my age who knew what the hell they were doing. Even at Chinese school, there were always kids that brought hamburgers, shunned chopsticks, or didn't get down with the funky shit. They were like faux-bootleg-Canal Street Chinamen.

That was one of the things that really annoyed me about growing up Chinese in the States. Even if you wanted to roll with Chinese/Taiwanese kids, there were barely any around and the ones that were had lost their culture and identity. They barely spoke Chinese, resented Chinese food, and if we got picked on by white people on the basketball court, everyone just looked out for themselves. It wasn't that I wanted people to carry around little red books to affirm their "Chinese-ness," but I just wanted to know there were other people that wanted this community to live on in America. ~ Eddie Huang

I saw an opportunity to use a restaurant to identify a lot of my issues and concerns with being an immigrant in America, and Asian in America, and a young person in America. ~ Eddie Huang

I remember not having money, I remember having money, and neither had a bearing on who I was as a person. It affected how others saw me, but not how I saw myself. ~ Eddie Huang

I don't think people realize how fucking weird Christianity is if you're not raised around it. But, hey, it got me off time-out. And, who knows, maybe a billion white people can't be wrong and it's all really true. ~ Eddie Huang

I'll always be American in my world view and allegiance. American in the naive way I go to other countries and tell them how they should treat their poor or clean their water. ~ Eddie Huang

Suburban or not, something most definitely went wrong and we're still trying to figure it out. But if you ask me, Pac and that dickhead at Debate Club had a lot to do with it. We never tried to join a club, after-school activity, or anything productive, for that matter, ever again. The Honor Roll wasn't something we wanted to be part of. We gave up on doing it their way, we wanted to get free. ~ Eddie Huang

If you grow up in an immigrant culture, there are going to be foods you eat that other people just don't get. ~ Eddie Huang

Asians don't use the oven for anything but holding Jordans. ~ Eddie Huang

People ask me what my greatest strengths are and I say perspective. The best way to get that is to meet people that are polar opposites; you learn the most from them. There are pieces of you that are inherently yours, but everything else is a collection of the things you've seen and the people you've met. ~ Eddie Huang

For me, juicing isn't about binging and cleansing; I try to incorporate it into a balanced diet. ~ Eddie Huang

...don't borrow money from people, but if other people need it from you lend it to them, as long as it's inconsequential. ~ Eddie Huang

What we did do was got to Chinese school. Whether you lived in D.C., Ann Arbor, New York, or Orlando, if there were Chinese people, there were Chinese schools where you went every Sunday to take Chinese Language and cultural classes. Chinese people would drive hours from every direction to take their kids to school. All teachers were volunteers and the parents chipped in to keep it going. While the rest of America went to church, we learned how to read right to left. ~ Eddie Huang

Unlike others who let it eat them up and took it to their graves, I refused to be that Chinese kid walking everywhere with his head down. I wanted my dignity, my identity, and my pride back; I wanted them to know there were repercussions to the things they said. There were no free passes on my soul and everything they stole from me I decided I'd take back double. (81) ~ Eddie Huang

For years, I wanted to know if there was one person, one voice, one individual inside me. All my life people would call me a chink or a chigger. I couldn't listen to hip-hop and be myself without people questioning my authenticity. Chinese people questioned my yellowness because I was born in America. The white people questioned my identity as an American because I was yellow.
No black or Spanish person ever called me chigger, but hustling all of a sudden got white people off my back. I was the same dude with a different job, but now I was finally "authentic" to white people, and it made me realized it's all a trap. We can't fucking win. If I follow the rules and play the model minority, I'm a lapdog under a bamboo ceiling. If I like hip-hop because I see solidarity, I'm aping. But, if I throw it all away, shit on my parents, sell weed, pills, and strike fear into unsuspecting white boys with stunt Glocks, now I's authentic? Fuck you, America. (171) ~ Eddie Huang

We weren't Americans like everyone else. We'd always be the other in this bullshit country. ~ Eddie Huang

I like a walking culture; I need to be in a city where you can walk everywhere. ~ Eddie Huang

These same ABCs couldn't speak Chinese and didn't care---but you don't have shit without your native tongue. African slaves were forced by threat of physical punishment to abandon their native languages, but a lot of us just gave ours up with a shrug---these Uncle Chans convinced us to assimilate, shut the fuck up, and play the part. What they didn't understand is that after your have the money and degrees, you can't buy your identity back. I wasn't worried about degrees, but I cared about my roots. Even if I hated what it meant to be an Asian in t he American wilderness, i respected the Chinese home I was raised in. Usually I wasn't so vocal about Asian identity, but without my parents around, I felt a sudden duty to say something myself. It's funny how annoying I thought my mom was, but as soon as she wasn't around, i carried the torch for her. ~ Eddie Huang

Porridge is our soup, our grits, our sustenance, so it's pretty much the go-to for breakfast. For the first time, I ate with a bunch of other Taiwanese-Chinese kids my age who knew what the hell they were doing. Even at Chinese school, there were always kids that brought hamburgers, shunned chopsticks, or didn't get down with the funky shit. They were like faux-bootleg-Canal Street Chinamen.
That was one of the things that really annoyed me about growing up Chinese in the States. Even if you wanted to roll with Chinese/Taiwanese kids, there were barely any around and the ones that were around had lost their culture and identity. They barely spoke Chinese, resented Chinese food, and if we got picked on by white people on the basketball court, everyone just looked out for themselves. It wasn't that I wanted people to carry around little red books to affirm their "Chinese-ness," but I just wanted to know there were other people that wanted this community to live on in America. There was on kid who wouldn't eat the thousand-year-old eggs at breakfast and all the other kids started roasting him.
"If you don't get down with the nasty shit, you're not Chinese!"
I was down with the mob, but something left me unsettled. One thing ABCs love to do is compete on "Chinese-ness," i.e., who will eat the most chicken feet, pig intestines, and have the highest SAT scores. I scored high in chick feet, sneaker game, and pirated good, but relatively low on the SAT. I had made Na ~ Eddie Huang

Landlords in New York are generally the scum of the earth. They're beneficiaries of the worst kind of nepotism, eating off the good business decisions of their parents. They have no compassion because they've never had to work for shit to know how it feels to need a fucking break. (256-257) ~ Eddie Huang

Sundays are for Dim Sum. While the rest of America goes to church, Sunday School, or NFL games, you can find Chinese people eating Cantonese food. ~ Eddie Huang

I wanted to get free. (129) ~ Eddie Huang

We'd all been through enough cultural cleansing situations that we knew something like Debate Club was going to try to remodel us, but I'll never forget what happened when we left. ~ Eddie Huang

The rest of the family hated Orlando. It was full of ass-backward transplants, bad food, and doo-doo basketball players. It was everything that sucked about the South with none of the benefits. People drove ride-on lawn mowers through their neighborhoods wearing Home Depot hats, but you couldn't find any decent barbecue within five counties. No Southern hospitality, just hot asphalt and suburban phoniness. All the ignorance, none of the sense. ~ Eddie Huang

Rice in Taiwan, unlike America, doesn't always come out soggy and limp. ~ Eddie Huang

The show is easy when there aren't real feelings behind it. ~ Eddie Huang

Carpetbaggers with no culture or moral compass, enabled and empowered with new money. ~ Eddie Huang

I wasn't meant to be an attorney, but I was meant to go to law school. ~ Eddie Huang

Religion wasn't a big deal in our house. I don't think it was a big deal in most Chinese households. We always had photos of ancestors, organs, and incense in bowls, but the family unit was bigger than any religion, or government for that matter. Besides education, there weren't any social issues I remember my parents getting down for. ~ Eddie Huang

The best part about beef noodle soup is that there are no rules. It just has to have beef, noodle, and soup. There are people that do clear broth beef noodle soup. Beef noodle soup with dairy. Beef noodle soup with pig's blood. It would suck if you looked at my recipe and never made your own, 'cause everyone has a beef noodle soup in them. Show it to me. ~ Eddie Huang

I blog because I have something to say. ~ Eddie Huang

These white people like really mushy food. ~ Eddie Huang

I don't like labels. I don't understand the need for them. When you define yourself a certain way, people have expectations. ~ Eddie Huang

Patience, attention, and restraint are the keys to good cooking. ~ Eddie Huang

That's the confidence that New York gave me. There was finally a city that appreciated what I had to say and the honesty with which I said it. ~ Eddie Huang

BaoHaus is idiosyncratic, creative, and artistic. My restaurant doesn't look like a Taiwanese restaurant. ~ Eddie Huang

I'd fake the part for a second to infiltrate, gather intelligence, and then ditch it, laughing on my way back to the outside. That's the perk of being Chinese, you can walk through walls and no one really notices. (155) ~ Eddie Huang

I get so disenfranchised reading the news, because global borders and lines we've created are completely unnecessary. That's just another person on the other side, and it's his bad luck that he was born there and it's my good fortune that I was born here. It's all kind of illogical. ~ Eddie Huang

The most infuriating thing is the idea that ethnic food isn't already good enough because it goddamn is. We were fine before you came to visit and we'll be fine after. If you like our food, great, but don't come tell me you're gonna clean it up, refine it, or elevate it because it's not necessary or possible. We don't need fucking food missionaries to cleanse our palates. ~ Eddie Huang

Every few months or so at home, Pops had to have Taiwanese 'Mian. Not the Dan-Dan Mian you get at Szechuan restaurants or in Fuchsia Dunlop's book, but Taiwanese Dan-Dan. The trademark of ours is the use of clear pork bone stock, sesame paste, and crushed peanuts on top. You can add chili oil if you want, but I take it clean because when done right, you taste the essence of pork and the bitterness of sesame paste; the texture is somewhere between soup and ragout. Creamy, smooth, and still soupy. A little za cai (pickled radish) on top, chopped scallions, and you're done. I realized that day, it's the simple things in life. It's not about a twelve-course tasting of unfamiliar ingredients or mass-produced water-added rib-chicken genetically modified monstrosity of meat that makes me feel alive. It's getting a bowl of food that doesn't have an agenda. The ingredients are the ingredients because they work and nothing more. These noodles were transcendent not because he used the best produce or protein or because it was locally sourced, but because he worked his dish. You can't buy a championship.
Did this old man invent Dan-Dan Mian? No. But did he perfect it with techniques and standards never before seen? Absolutely. He took a dish people were making in homes, made it better than anyone else, put it on front street, and established a standard. That's professional cooking. To take something that already speaks to us, do it at the highest level, and force everyone else to st ~ Eddie Huang

Take the things from America that speak to you, that excite you, that inspire you, and be the Americans we all want to know; then cook it up and sell it back to them for $28.99. Cue Funk Flex to drop bombs on this. All my peoples from the boat, let 'em know: WEOUTCHEA. ~ Eddie Huang

Bankers make money, too, but I'm not running up into Chase and throwing milk shakes at the homie selling subprime mortgages. ~ Eddie Huang

Whether it's food or women, the ones on front street are supermodels. Big hair, big tits, big trouble, but the one you come home to is probably something like cavatelli and red sauce. She's not screaming for attention because she knows she's good enough even if your dumb ass hasn't figured it out yet. ~ Eddie Huang

People talk about perfect timing, but I think everything is perfect in its moment; you just want to capture that. ~ Eddie Huang

Back then, when the culture was still building, people were loyal to stores, brands, and the cause. The style was retro-nineties, loud colors, vector or photographic driven, skinny jeans, selvage denim, lots of Japanese brands, and hip-hop/street culture content. There was also a political aspect to streetwear. Speaking for myself, I was sick of rocking logos for people. What people started printing their own shirts on AAA or American Apparel blanks, we got to rep the culture through the clothing. In the post-9/11 era, a lot of the more powerful messages about individuality, free speech, and what it was to be American manifested themselves in streetwear. (215) ~ Eddie Huang

Everything comes clear and you see exactly how you're goonna win the game: by doing you....I found my voice and no one was going to take it from me. (124) ~ Eddie Huang

Good food makes me want to hit a punching bag like, Dat's right motherfucker. You done did it there. ~ Eddie Huang

In America, we're allowed to play ONE role, the eunuch who can count. ~ Eddie Huang

Once again, my dad knew something I didn't. Looking back, I realize it wasn't just I was Asian. I was a loud-mounthed, brash, broken Asian who had no respect for authority in any form, wether it was a parent, teacher, or country. Not only was I not white, to many people I wasn't Asian either. (148) ~ Eddie Huang

Chinese people questioned my yellowness because I was born in America. Then white people questioned my identity as an American because I was yellow. ~ Eddie Huang

For Michael Wright and Frank Darabont to cast me as the ultimate good guy and Eddie Burns as the ultimate bad guy, and really switching roles from what we usually play, is pretty awesome. That generally doesn't happen, but TNT is a horse of a different color. ~ Neal McDonough

What are you eating?" he ask us.
"Whatever won't kill me, please" I said.
"Whatever don't kill you'll make you stronger" says Eddie, who is always ready with folksy wisdom.
"All right," I say. "Then give me whatever will make me stronger."
"One pizza, coming up. ~ Adam Selzer

You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment. ~ Eddie Vedder

VERY WELL, ROLAND OF GILEAD.
'VERY WELL, EDDIE OF NEW YORK.
'VERY WELL, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK.
'VERY WELL, JAKE OF NEW YORK.
'VERY WELL, OY OF MID-WORLD. ~ Stephen King

I wanna live 'til I die, no more, no less. ~ Eddie Izzard

There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing. ~ Eddie Vedder

Well I'm a-gonna raise a fuss, I'm gonna raise a holler
About workin' all summer just to try an' earn a dollar
Everytime I call my baby, to try to get a date
My boss says, no dice, son, you gotta work late
Sometimes I wonder what I'm gonna do
'cause there ain't no cure for the summertime blues. ~ Eddie Cochran

My idea is just to do something different each time; the next thing I do has to be completely different to the thing I've done before - that's what I try and do, because you know, I'm an actor, not a film star. ~ Eddie Marsan

Have great power, and everyone knows one or two." "Even me," Eddie said. "For instance, why did the dead baby cross the road?" "That's dumb, Eddie," Susannah said, but she was smiling. "Because it was stapled to the chicken!" Eddie yelled, and grinned when Jake burst into laughter, knocking his little pile of kindling apart. ~ Stephen King

I think Clapton is brilliant. He's the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar. ~ Eddie Van Halen

Every once in awhile I'll call up Eddie (Van Halen) and ask, Found that fourth chord yet? ~ Billy Gibbons

With a face like mine, I'm never going to play a character who conquers the universe, I'm going to play characters who are subject to forces bearing down on them. My career's based on how we are rather than how we wish we were - they get the good-looking boys in for that kind of role. ~ Eddie Marsan

You only have 12 notes. Do what you want with them. ~ Eddie Van Halen

Because we all know one of the main factors of war is the element of surprise. And what could be more surprising than the First Batallion Transvestite Brigade? Airborne Wing. ~ Eddie Izzard

I went to the zoo one day and saw a chimp playing with a beat-up acoustic guitar in a way I had never seen before. Instead of using the pick the chimp was banging the neck and tapping it with its fingers. I knew the chimp was on to something so I practiced this new technique in my room for hours until I'd perfected it. ~ Eddie Van Halen

Faith should mean something. Gods . . . should stand for something, not chop and change with every breeze that blows. Gods should be worshipped for the truths they represent, not what party favours they might dispense.-Razor Eddie the Punk God of the Straight Razor ~ Simon R. Green

Sometimes the children asked Eddie to lift them over his head, and when Eddie complied, he saw the mothers' sad smiles: He guessed it was the right lift but the wrong pair of arms. ~ Mitch Albom

I was writing with different people in Nashville - whoever I could. Eddie Hinton came on the scene about 1963, and about four years later we wrote a ton of songs together. I drifted around, but Eddie and I had some cuts through the '60s and '70s. I went on the road with Kris Kristofferson in 1970. ~ Donnie Fritts

I went swimming the other day and my wife was watching and she said, 'You know, it's funny, it's when you've got no clothes on, no one recognizes you.' I said, 'What are you saying? That I should do more love scenes?' ~ Eddie Marsan

I thought Eddie Redmayne portrayed me very well ... At times I thought he was me. ~ Stephen Hawking

Last fight I had with the bitch ended way too soon."
Eddie rolled his eyes and glanced at Jim. "It was in the Middle Ages and he still hasn't gotten over it. ~ J.R. Ward

When I was 13, I was just figuring out how to play 'Eruption,' poorly, by Eddie Van Halen. ~ Dierks Bentley

I wish I was the verb 'to trust' and never let you down ... ~ Eddie Vedder

You can tell everybody that Eddie Robinson's out looking for a job right now, and believe me, he's a great kid. He's happy and he's healthy. All he needs is a couple of weeks to regain game fitness. Put him on the court and when the game counts ... Eddie Robinson is about one word: winning and losing. He's a great athlete, and I love him to death. ~ Paul Collier