"An artist can create works for himself to 'do himself good,' or to 'do good' for others. Perhaps the greatest artists are those who simultaneously resolve their own problems and those of their public." François Truffaut in his analysis for Charlie's magnum opus The Great Dictator

“After a couple of years as an engineer, of course, the routine bored me. One night, I was driving after work in downtown Seattle, and I saw a billboard outside a movie theater with the words, German New Wave, and the title, Aguirre: The Wrath of God [a 1972 West German film directed by Werner Herzog--R.S.]. It made me curious, so I went in. I was fortunate. I came out a different person. That two hours just blew me away. It restored my sense of competence that I could be a filmmaker. This is what I thought a film should be. Film school would never teach you to make those kinds of shots. That was one of the crucial moments of my life. I had turned thirty, I thought I was getting old, and three more years passed before I got the chance to work on a film project with a friend who asked me to write a script for him. I went back to Taipei, and also visited Hong Kong for the first time, and the film was shot in Japan. I got an offer to write and direct a made-for-TV movie in Taiwan, so I didn't go back to Seattle. After ten years my mom was still calling and asking, 'When are you coming back to your regular job?'”

When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.