Mary H.K. Choi Quotes

If you are someone‘s emergency contact – you are their person, and they are your person – there is work involved.

I roll my eyes at the grandstanding blowhards who have ‘fixed‘ themselves, but I keep up with the gizmos and apps that track people’s various rhythms. I’m no lifelogger or body-hacker, but I’m curious, and I want to be in-tune enough to know what’s really the matter so I can level up and be at my most awesome.

Home is where my house pants live. And they’re hideous.

Privateers, military contractors – these aren’t pirates. They have bosses. Real pirates are sellswords on missions of their own making.

When I was small, I thought I was just cooler than my mom because of how foreign she is. She’s really foreign. You’d think it would kill her to get store-bought snacks, she’s that foreign.

‘Emergency Contact’ is about the anxiousness that is inherent in meat space interactions.

LaCroix sparkling water is absolutely delicious.

Manhattan, after eight years here, still reminds me of Hong Kong. There are parts of Chinatown that are the spit and image of streets in Wan Chai, and I am held in thrall by the Chrysler building as much as I was by I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower.

Wikipedia‘s a collaborative experiment akin to Simon Winchester’s account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in ‘The Professor and the Madman,’ which outlines James Murray’s mission to produce the tome in the 19th century.

By the time you’re in your 30s, unless somebody makes the god-awful decision to gift you with a cooking class or salsa lessons, it may have been a while since you learnt something new.

If you’re holding your iPhone, and it’s the newest iteration of it, you’re like, ‘Oh, famous people have my phone. Captains of industry have my phone.’ And that can be an intoxicating experience for someone who is going off to college for the first time.

The second single from ‘Purpose,’ Justin Bieber’s fourth studio album, ‘Sorry‘ is an infectious confection – a Dorito for your ears.

I am obsessed with Neil Patrick Harris on Twitter.

Even the coolest jobs get stultifying with repetition, and the only way to break that cycle is to bring another job into the mix.

When you have tools with which to stalk everyone all the time, the most seemingly aloof person wins.

A fanboy’s heart is filled with love, enthusiasm, and insecurity.

Rihanna‘s boots are too scared to look bad on Rihanna.

People bursting into song in unison and then pointing it at me is maybe the worst thing I can think of, never mind that you have to pay good money to go be yelled/danced at.

I love small-business owners, and I actually love the idea of vintage clothing, but I don’t get when they pretend that the Internet doesn’t exist or that other customers have never been to the whole rest of the country where you can rummage around and buy the same dang belt for a buck and a half.

When I moved to New York City from Texas at 22, amateur hour was over. As a newly grown-up person, I vowed I would wear dresses and skirts, wool trousers occasionally, and heels always.

My sweet spot as a writer and, especially, as an essayist is sub-1500 words.

Pedicures are disgraceful.

Never post anything personal to your Facebook wall. Or anyone else‘s, for that matter. Only snitches and teachers look at Facebook.

Consider this: alms aside, Wikipedia is fueled by competitive pedantry and emo-ness. How great is that?

‘Awkward‘ is a ubiquitous teen word to denote socially unsanctioned behavior. It usually implies first- or secondhand embarrassment when you or a friend step outside the rules. Awkward doesn’t sound overtly judgmental or negative; it’s deliberately vague.

I was born in Korea and left before my first birthday.

Nothing is more untoward than a grown man tasking another with snapping a pic expressly so he can ‘flex the ‘fit.’ It’s tacky -self-aggrandizing – and speaks to an existential neediness typically reserved for failed actresses and phenomenally successful rappers.

Join a Bikram-flow-yoga, Flywheel, or Pilates class so you can find spiritual oneness amid grunting socialite moms. Do whatever you want. Just, please, for the love of God, stop talking about it.

My mom is an excellent mom. She knows I am irascible, prickly, and antisocial. She knows that most human interaction makes me tired and that I either scare people away with precise invectives or trot out the fakest, nicest skinjob of myself because it requires zero effort.

I have a lot of respect for people who write a whole book because I’ve heard it will kill you.

Part of me just wants ‘Jane‘ magazine back, and ‘Sassy,’ too.

From the first time I harangued my mother into buying me a pair of platform sandals at the irascible and persistent age of 11, I’ve worn heels.

I am anti-Halloween.

Everyone is such a mystery, yet we chug along so much of the time presuming we’re all on the same page.

Learning to ride a bike in a public park means anyone can see you.

Hopefully, if I get enough of a fan army together, people will let me write fiction.

Nothing beats SoulCycle for dumbing all the way out or re-calibrating a mood in less than an hour, which is reassuring, since I typically wake up in a panic that’s candy-coated with a low-grade rage.

Twenty-thirteen was the year I got super into SoulCycle.

I do not care for musicals. In fact, I hate them.

For people who deal with anxiety or depression or can’t be in large social groups cognitively, emotionally, or even physically, phones help bridge the gap.

I find texting to be kind of a safe space.

Home is where I climb out of my mecha-suit-of-a-poised-persona and power down.

There is so much focus on being self-sufficient, and it makes it very difficult to ask for things. I’ve been crippled by this notion of high-functioning self-sufficiency. And I see it a lot in younger girls. Asking for help brings people closer in a way that I suspected but didn’t actually put into practice.

Never post food on your Instagram. Nobody cares, and only old people do it.

I love how British people call Asian people ‘oriental‘ unless they’re talking about Indian people, who get to be called Asian.

I would never give up ‘The Wire,’ ‘Breaking Bad,’ and ‘Game of Thrones.’ I’m grateful for all these expensive, excellent, graphically ambitious programs.

The thing about living in New York as a writer is that you hit that age where it feels like everyone has a book all at the same time. It’s like that one year where you’re invited to twenty weddings.

‘Sorry’ is unlike anything Bieber has made in the past. It has been classified as ‘tropical house’ and ‘dancehall,’ but everyone seems to agree on one thing: It’s a banger.

I love New York, but sometimes New York is so mean to you.

Jockeying for a popularity position has been a valorized teen tradition since the notion of a discrete teen stage of life was invented.