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Never post boring back-to-back selfies.
Mary H.K. Choi -
I commit words to paper and the Internet for everyone to pick apart, so I think I tend to be a lot more cynical and dulled.
Mary H.K. Choi
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For my first job interview out of college, I wore a cream-colored cotton suit with cap sleeves and an inverted box pleat skirt that was appropriate for the late-August heat - and wildly discordant with the Red Hook offices of the graffiti magazine I had called twice to find.
Mary H.K. Choi -
Eventually, I just want to write wavy little short stories.
Mary H.K. Choi -
Aside from the can, everything about LaCroix is gentle.
Mary H.K. Choi -
You are overwhelmed, overscheduled, and dejected because you keep trying to have it all - or at least most of it. You want a fulfilling job and personal life, and it's not working. The way out? Work more.
Mary H.K. Choi -
If you are someone's emergency contact - you are their person, and they are your person - there is work involved.
Mary H.K. Choi -
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.
Mary H.K. Choi
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Yes, Justin Bieber is a contrivance. Yes, Justin Bieber's lyrics are insipid - worse still, disingenuous. Yes, his tattoos stink. Yes, he's lousy at skateboarding. But what does any of this actually matter? In case you missed it, Bieber won.
Mary H.K. Choi -
Do you know why we pay trainers and nutritionists? Because having to muster interest in the minor successes of someone else's journey toward pedestrian-ass healthiness is taxing and should be compensated.
Mary H.K. Choi -
Pirates, me hearties, are the Patronus of the freelancer.
Mary H.K. Choi -
Privateers, military contractors - these aren't pirates. They have bosses. Real pirates are sellswords on missions of their own making.
Mary H.K. Choi -
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.
Mary H.K. Choi -
I'm great at leaving. I am less talented at getting left, though I should be better, given how much it's happened.
Mary H.K. Choi
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The thing about leaving New York is that you can come back.
Mary H.K. Choi -
I'm a sucker when it comes to under-explored human potential and 'stuff that makes you be better.'
Mary H.K. Choi -
I would never give up 'The Wire,' 'Breaking Bad,' and 'Game of Thrones.' I'm grateful for all these expensive, excellent, graphically ambitious programs.
Mary H.K. Choi -
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.
Mary H.K. Choi -
Jockeying for a popularity position has been a valorized teen tradition since the notion of a discrete teen stage of life was invented.
Mary H.K. Choi -
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.
Mary H.K. Choi
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Even the coolest jobs get stultifying with repetition, and the only way to break that cycle is to bring another job into the mix.
Mary H.K. Choi -
Everyone is such a mystery, yet we chug along so much of the time presuming we're all on the same page.
Mary H.K. Choi -
I love how British people call Asian people 'oriental' unless they're talking about Indian people, who get to be called Asian.
Mary H.K. Choi -
I find texting to be kind of a safe space.
Mary H.K. Choi