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Permanent Record QUOTES

Permanent Record QUOTES

1 " ... I've made peace with the fact that I won't ever make a lot of money, but I make enough to live and eat. The rest goes to your mother. I know you boys think the way I live is depressing and strange, but in art the purpose is in the creation, not the result. 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. 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

2 " 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

3 " Trying to get better at the thing you want to be the best at is humiliating. "

― Mary H.K. Choi , Permanent Record

4 " Life isn't a destination. It's the continual practice of things that make you wiser and happier. "

― Mary H.K. Choi , Permanent Record

5 " 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

6 " Nothing that is a manifestation of your creative energies is stupid... Doing nothing is the only stupid. "

― Mary H.K. Choi , Permanent Record

7 " 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

8 " Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we told each other the things we never say. "

― Mary H.K. Choi , Permanent Record

9 " 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

10 " 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

11 " 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

12 " 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

13 " 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

14 " 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

15 " I want to be happy," says dad. "I want to be interested and challenged by whatever verb I elect to noun in any given moment of my life. If I am healthy, my family's healthy, and I am of sound enough mind to sustain curiosity around my work, then I'm blessed. "

― Mary H.K. Choi , Permanent Record

16 " 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

17 " 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

18 " At times I can’t even feel myself in my own body. "

― Mary H.K. Choi , Permanent Record

19 " 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

20 " 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