Permanent Record Quotes

“Trying to get better at the thing you want to be the best at is humiliating.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“Life isn't a destination. It's the continual practice of things that make you wiser and happier.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“Nothing that is a manifestation of your creative energies is stupid... Doing nothing is the only stupid.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“Here's what I want to know about school. Everyone assumes kids are bad at decisions, right? So why would anyone let an eighteen-year-old kid pick what they want to do in college?”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“Grow as you build. Autotelism. ‘Auto’ for self and ‘telos’ for goal. Find joy in the learning, Pablo, not in what it will get you. It took me so much searching to stop searching.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“It's lonely when no one worries about you. Not even your parents. You start to wonder what's wrong with you.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“But I can’t help but wonder how much my people are mine. If they’d claim me in the same way I want to claim them.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we told each other the things we never say.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“It’s not my responsibility to get to the bottom of why my mom’s so unhappy. Nor is it on me to teach my dad how to parent. I love them and I forgive them, but I don’t go to the hardware store looking for orange juice and I don’t expect them to give me things they don’t have. I give myself permission not to spend time with them.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“I care about everything equally until I care about so many things I get overwhelmed and care about nothing at all.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“You’d think there’d be a word for it. That city-living intimacy where you know the minutia of their routines, rituals, and clothes but absolutely nothing else.”
― Mary H K Choi, Permanent Record

“It’s crazy to me that there isn’t a word for “spinster” that refers to men.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“Art is fuelled by longing but you must learn to want what you have, not get what you want. It’s the only way to stop suffering.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“What you’re calling a hobby could change his life. And if it doesn’t, that has to be okay. You have to forgive him. You’ve got to let people mess up and you’ve still got to help them. You have to talk to them and support them while they make decisions, even if they’re the wrong ones. That’s how people learn, mom. Umma-ni-kah.” Because you’re the mom.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“I love that we’re always on the same page,” she says, turning to kiss me.
Meanwhile I’d give anything to know what page that was.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“Families are a trip,” says Lee. “You think you know them so well that you stay wrong about each other.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“At times I can’t even feel myself in my own body.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“It's demoralizing when wins have nothing to do with talent.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“I can't burden them with my shit. Mom will absorb it all as a personal failing. Neither of them has the tools to deal with this. I'll have to figure it out on my own.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“Do the next right thing and don't worry about anything else coming down the pike. You don't have an audience. No one's judging you. Do the work.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“I want out of this store, out of this moment, out of my skin. I need an elastic band to snap around my wrist. I rub my eyes until I see stars. I rub them again as if I can scrape the horrible, weak-willed pipe dreams from my brain.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“I don’t know that I know what depression feels like, but most days if I’m honest I wake up with a hammering in my heart and unless I’m talking to Lee I don’t see the point in being conscious.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“She peers through the glass for flavors instead of leaving the door hanging open. My mom calls this noonchi, which is Korean for "situational awareness" or "considerateness." People who lack it keep their backpacks on in crowded trains and refuse to slow down when they're walking behind old people. Which is to say they're assholes. This girl has noonchi. She's polite.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“To this day I have no inkling as to what I care about the most. I care about everything equally until I care about so many things I get overwhelmed and care about nothing at all.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“Be where your feet are. That's what my mom says when I'm forecasting - or bugging out about the future. I'm supposed to let an ice cube melt in my hand or flick a rubber band around my wrist so I can, you know, snap out of it, but I don't do either. I let the circles spin.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“I get ready for bed. I’m exhausted, but any time I still my mind it’s as if twenty pairs of eyes inside my head spring open.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“-Nada que sea una manifestación de la energía creativa es una tontería-sentencia-. La única tontería es no hacer nada.”
― Mary H. K. Choi, Registro permanente

“Lo que haces... quien eres... tiene su propio centro de gravedad. O campo de distorsión, supongo.”
― Mary H. K. Choi, Registro permanente

“Hay un álbum dentro de mí. Lo sé. Una obra que se muere por salir sentí eso”
― Mary H. K. Choi, Registro permanente

“Art is fueled by longing but you must learn to want what you have, not get what you want. It’s the only way to stop suffering. I pray that you’ll know this meaning by the time you’re my age.”
― Mary H K Choi, Permanent Record