Top 100 Mary H.K. Choi Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I have fulfilled all the base layers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and am at the tippy-top. Self-actualization feels incredible. It’s the feeling of being totally ordinary and completely OK with it.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

2. “You don’t have to feel like you’re overstaying your welcome with me.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

3. “New York is just a place. It’s the people who will become a home for you.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

4. “It means I’ll think about you all the time and wish you were close even when I’m not here.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

5. “Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we told each other the things we never say.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

6. “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

7. “Sisters never stand a chance to be friends. We’re pitted against each other from the moment we are born. A daughter is a treasure. Two is a tax.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

8. “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

9. “This is probably how emergency contacts work. You say something to your person before you go nuts and blow a gasket.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

10. “It’s crazy how lonely it is to be in a family.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

11. “Have you ever considered that it isn’t a place that will improve your life? That there is no such thing as a geographic cure?”

— Mary H.K. Choi

12. “Loving someone was traumatizing. You never knew what would happen to them out there in the world. Everything precious was also vulnerable.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

13. “Fiction was fine, but real life was the true freak show.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

14. “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

15. “There was more than one type of perfectionist. And that I qualified because the kind of perfectionist I was, was the kind that abandoned everything if I wasn’t good enough at it. And that’s why I couldn’t finish tasks.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

16. “Plus, you don’t go to Trader Joe’s unless you’re in it. It’s grocery IKEA. Everybody knows that. You have to be prepared to fight. That’s long relationship territory. Like, we’re talking picking people up from the airport.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

17. “You’re only as sick as your secrets. The second you talk about it, pfth. She blows a raspberry and waggles her fingers into the air. It all starts to get a little better. Humans need to share their darkest parts. Unburdening makes you closer to everyone.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

18. “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

19. “At times I can’t even feel myself in my own body.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

20. “I find that the more I hide, the more presentable I am to the world.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

21. “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

22. “Cancer must feel like such a betrayal, knowing that somewhere deep in your body you’re manufacturing tiny bombs that detonate and catch fire.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

23. “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

24. “It hurt Penny’s heart how much she loved her. How scared she’d been when Michael called. Loving someone was traumatizing. You never knew what would happen to them out there in the world. Everything precious was also vulnerable.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

25. “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

26. “It’s piles and piles of emotional homework forever if you ever want to qualify as a grown-up.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

27. “Loving someone was traumatizing.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

28. “People don’t really want to know how you’re doing. They want to wait until you’re done telling them so they can tell you how they’re doing.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

29. “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

30. “The next morning Sam woke up feeling good. Not sensational or anything foolish but supremely okay.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

31. “Yeah, exactly where a dad should be. Holding a firearm and warding off potential suitors until that daughter is of consenting age,” he said. “Which in my book is about forty-six.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

32. “You know, the trick to taking care of your sister is letting her think she’s taking care of you.” She scoops my hand in hers. “I suspect you can ask your father the best way to do that since he does it so well with me.” This makes me laugh.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

33. “I’m no longer angry. In fact, I’m no longer much of anything.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

34. “I like knowing that you exist. It doesn’t make me feel any less lonely, because life is lonely, but it makes me feel a lot less alone.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

35. “Everything precious was also vulnerable.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

36. “Penny would stop trying. Instead she’d spend time preparing for her future, living in books until the exciting part of her life would begin. Things would matter then. In fact, everything would be different.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

37. “What’s the point? The planet is on fire and everything is random.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

38. “Hell really was other people.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

39. “I know what it’s like to want to leave. How it feels when the home you have is a mirage, an illusion. But I know that wherever I am, if June’s around, I’ll be ok.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

40. “It didn’t help that in AP English Lit, junior year, they’d read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” which was basically The Hunger Games except it was written in the forties and had a twist at the end.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

41. “He couldn’t believe Jude’s mute, macabre roommate had saved his life. He wondered if he’d have to get her a small taxidermied spider or something for her efforts.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

42. “I reline my eyes, fix my lipstick, and put away my reflection. I allow a smile to tease at my lips, summoning someone beguiling. I imagine myself in a movie. It usually helps. I glance around for any attractive people. Male, female, old, it doesn’t matter. Someone to see myself through.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

43. “I want to be with someone I can talk to. I want to be with someone who automatically has a fat folder on me. Someone who feels lucky when I tell them the most unflattering, scary stuff.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

44. “It’s dazzling how disposable we all are.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

45. “We all have the same boring problems. Sometimes the best thing you can do is talk about it.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

46. “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

47. “Finally, if you’re wondering if it counts and it feels like it counts, it counts.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

48. “Everyone is capable of putting words down or telling a story. But not everyone will actually do it.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

49. “At least there was coffee. Reliable, delicious, life-giving coffee.”

— Mary H.K. Choi

50. “Men don’t enjoy the taste of lipstick though they like the look of it.”

— Mary H.K. Choi