Mary H. K. Choi

“It was inconceivable for Penny that his eyes served any function other than to be admired.”

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

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

“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 invective...”

“I suspect that living 24/7 in workout attire is the clothing version of the messy topknot. We all know that your hair is dirty, or too long, or too frizzy, or your roots have grown out, but...”

“The first time I drank LaCroix, I half expected it to be filled with self-tanner. Or Axe body spray.”

“In New York, you collect a thousand encounters a year, a passel of handshakes, a zillion air-kisses, and boatloads of business cards that you pitch into your purse and eventually deposit you...”

“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 bui...”

“Try life as your own boss, on your own voyage. No daily commute. No salad bar at 12:15. No cc'ing about the meeting.”

“Your mom is the first person you fall in love with, so it's loaded forever and carries all this baggage. There's almost always a communication barrier in place. In my case it's a language an...”

“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 o...”

“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 disc...”

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

“If you can relate to what another person is going through while giving their experience room to be its own discrete thing, you're probably a crackerjack emergency contact.”

“Pedicures are disgraceful.”

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

“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 typi...”

“I have horrible shoe hang-ups. Particularly when it comes to flats.”

“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...”

“The thing that I find interesting about teens now is that no matter how desperate we seem to be taxonomically 'othering' them, for one reason or another - because the Internet, because whate...”