I've been doing the Vietnamese nail lady impressions since my mom first took me to get my nails done when I was 12.

Vietnamese are very similar to the Chinese. They just can't sit on gold bars underneath their beds. Eventually, they will pull out their gold bars and invest.

My parents would dress us up in traditional Vietnamese clothing to go to school for heritage day. We have a Vietnamese nanny that my parents wanted us to have so we could stay in touch and know where we came from.

I grew up around Vietnamese refugees, around people who don't speak English as a first language.

We moved to a town that's predominately Caucasian, some Hispanic and one or two black families, and they do shrimping for a living. Here come hundreds of Vietnamese doing the same occupation. So there was a lot of tension because people were saying we were taking money, shrimp, fish or whatever it is.

I didn't expect to find much visible trace of the American war in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are too hard-bitten to dwell on it, and they've sanded away all but the outcroppings of history - the museums, the memorials.

In 1975, the Americans suffered a spectacular military defeat at the hands of North Vietnam and the Vietcong, with U.S. helicopters seeking to rescue leading U.S. personnel from the tops of buildings as Vietnamese guerrillas closed in on the centre of Saigon.

I grew up with white friends, Asian friends - Vietnamese, Chinese, Pacific Islanders. I had Hispanic friends, not just Mexican friends, but Guatemalan friends, Honduran friends, and we knew the difference, you know?

I cook Italian, Thai and Vietnamese, I've always liked to cook.

We moved in to help the Vietnamese defend their country and confront the Viet Cong.

What they fear, I think rightly, is that traditional Vietnamese society cannot survive the American economic and cultural impact.

You remember all those phrases about how 'these people' - Asians - don't value human life like we do. Well if you spend any time around them, you discover that they love their children just as much as we love ours. That is certainly true of the Vietnamese.

My district is the proud home of Little Saigon, which is home to more Vietnamese Americans than anywhere else in the United States.

Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity.

My dad and I had been close - he called me Tuyet Bang, Vietnamese for 'avalanche,' because of my nonstop energy. I took a lot from him, like being a risk taker, and I know how much he loved my mother.

I only follow one party: the Vietnamese party.

I believe that the United States has no possible ability to pacify the Vietnamese people, win support for Thieu, win a political victory or a military victory in the air, on the ground, in the North or the South.

I love how Vietnamese cuisine always tastes like flowers, and how they had the ingenious idea of pairing that floral flavor with seafood: such a combination shouldn't work as well as it does.

My solution to the problem would be to tell the North Vietnamese Communists frankly that they've got to drawn in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the stone age.

The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about - or as a ritual like filling up a car - but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon.