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I've never been in any country for more than four years, and I'm learning different languages all the time. It gives you a different attitude.

When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You speak a secret, unknown language, lacking any correspondence to the environment. An absence that creates a distance within you.

I've studied Chinese in college, but basically, I'm not bilingual.

Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think.

I meet people overseas that know five languages - that the only language I'm comfortable in is English.

Even though I'm very Westernized as an individual and very Canadian, I guess I've lost some of my Chinese culture.

We've got so many different cultural groups in my family that I've had to learn to accommodate them in different ways. My father speaks different to my mum. My mum speaks different to my grandmother. Everybody speaks different, so you find you start tweaking your language to be more accessible to people.

The more you speak more languages, the more you understand about yourself.

I feel that as the world becomes more and more multicultural, it's a good tool to be able to speak another language.

Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese.