Our theme for this year's festivities, Dreams and Challenges of Asian Pacific Americans, speaks to the many generations of Asian Pacific Americans who worked hard to overcome economic hardship, racism and other barriers in their pursuit of the American dream.

In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.

Mother Teresa

Genie währt länger als Schönheit.

Oscar Wilde

It sounds funny, but the 2008 Olympics were something that just kind of happened, and I was lucky they came at a point when I was uninjured and well prepared. As a gymnast, you can't ask for much more.

Shawn Johnson

I really wouldn't want to live in America. I found New York claustrophobic and dirty. I missed England when I was there, simple things like smells and the British sense of humor.

Jonny Lee Miller

As fast as each opportunity presents itself, use it! No matter how tiny an opportunity it may be, use it!

Robert Collier

He always looked forward to the evening drives through the centre of Shanghai, this electric and lurid city, more exciting than any other in the world. As they reached the Bubbling Well Road he pressed his face to the windshield and gazed at the pavements lined with night-clubs and gambling dens, crowded with bar-girls and gangsters and rich beggars with their bodyguards. Crowds of gamblers pushed their way into the jai alai stadiums, blocking the traffic in the Bubbling Well Road. An armoured police van with two Thompson guns mounted in a steel turret above the driver swung in front of the Packard and cleared the pavement. A party of young Chinese women in sequinned dresses tripped over a child's coffin decked with paper flowers. Arms linked together, they lurched against the radiator grille of the Packard and swayed past Jim's window, slapping the windshield with their small hands and screaming obscenities. Nearby, along the windows of the Sun Sun department store in the Nanking Road, a party of young European jews were fighting in and out of the strolling crowds with a gang of older German boys in the swastika armbands of the Graf Zeppelin Club. Chased by the police sirens, they ran through the entrance of the Cathay Theatre, the world's largest cinema, where a crowd of Chinese shopgirls and typists, beggars and pickpockets spilled in the street to watch people arriving for the evening performance. As they stepped from their limousines the women steered their long skirts through the honour guard of fifty hunchbacks in mediaeval costume. Three months earlier, when his parents had taken Jim to the premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, there had been two hundred hunchbacks, recruited by the management of the theatre from every back alley in Shanghai. As always, the spectacle outside the theatre for exceeded anything shown on its screen.

J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.

Robin Hobb

Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

Vincent Van Gogh

Terrorist are picadors and matadors. They prick the bull until it bleeds and is blinded by rage, then they snap the red cape of bloody terror in its face. The bull charges again and again until, exhausted, it can charge no more. Then the matador, though smaller and weaker, drives the sword into the soft spot between the shoulder blades of the bull. For the bull has failed to understand that the snapping cape was but a provocation to goad it into attacking and exhausting itself for the kill.

Patrick J. Buchanan, Where the R

I like to cook Indian food when I can. I find the process of creating a home-cooked meal to be unwinding.

Archie Panjabi

Even a true artist does not always produce art.

Carroll O'Connor

When it comes to raising civilized kids there are no hard rules, but there are two things on which most parents agree: Boys are generally wilder than girls, and adolescents are wilder than kids of any other age. If you've got an adolescent boy, you're in the sweet spot for trouble.

Jeffrey Kluger