Mary H.K. Choi

“I'm a sucker when it comes to under-explored human potential and 'stuff that makes you be better.'”

“Aside from the can, everything about LaCroix is gentle.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If you are someone's emergency contact - you are their person, and they are your person - there is work involved.”

“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.”

“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 your chewing gum into. Amid this break-neck montage of glancing contacts, I'm tormented by the constant thrumming fear of being fingered as a flake.”

“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.”

“I'm great at leaving. I am less talented at getting left, though I should be better, given how much it's happened.”

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

“Twenty-thirteen was the year I got super into SoulCycle.”

“There is so much focus on being self-sufficient, and it makes it very difficult to ask for things. I've been crippled by this notion of high-functioning self-sufficiency. And I see it a lot in younger girls. Asking for help brings people closer in a way that I suspected but didn't actually put into practice.”

“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.”

“I have a lot of respect for people who write a whole book because I've heard it will kill you.”

“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'm curious, and I want to be in-tune enough to know what's really the matter so I can level up and be at my most awesome.”

“I'm pretty sure I peaked at 15.”

“Instagram is not a place for tone or irony.”

“Everyone is such a mystery, yet we chug along so much of the time presuming we're all on the same page.”

“Part of me just wants 'Jane' magazine back, and 'Sassy,' too.”