Michelle Zauner

“I can't enjoy the rush of how magical of an experience it is to have people listen to you, and relate to you, and have this type of attention and understanding.”

“My main memory of 'Soft Sounds' was that I was so convinced that 'Psychopomp' was this fluke - I had this real pressure of avoiding the sophomore slump.”

“I would love to play an H Mart parking lot.”

“Growing up, there were stereotypes being put onto me as an Asian person that I had no control over, and that made me extremely uncomfortable.”

“I try to not beat myself up about anything. I think that's the biggest thing.”

“Initially it was so important for me to be credited as a producer, play all these instruments and be the sole writer on everything. I think especially as a woman, you want to be taken seriously as a musician, as a producer.”

“My dad and I actually don't speak anymore. It's still something that I'm trying to figure out and I definitely don't have all of the answers to.”

“Being a caretaker for someone who's dying was really, really hard at 25.”

“English was always my favorite subject in middle school and high school.”

“I don't think a lot of Korean people even make kimchi. My mom certainly didn't, so it's a very extra thing to do in the same way that I guess baking bread can be an even longer process that you're unsure about for a long time.”

“Once death was really close to me, I suddenly became very fearful of it. I think that lit a fire in me like, 'What do you have to say before it happens?'”

“The most Korean thing you can eat that's so easy is Shin Ramyun with an egg cracked into it and kimchi on the side. I feel like every Korean person eats that at nighttime or for a snack.”

“I don't really listen to podcasts - I like one podcast and it's called Song Exploder.”

“When my mother died of cancer in 2014, my father was quick to reinvent himself. Within a year, he moved to Thailand, became obsessed with scuba diving and consumer-grade underwater photography, and proposed to a Burmese woman in her mid-30s, an engagement he broke off within a year or two.”

“When I'm in America, everyone thinks of me as the Asian girl. When I go to Korea, everyone thinks of me as an American.”

“I tried to be a musician for seven years and I'd given it my all, but no one was really interested or it wasn't enough.”

“A lot of cookbooks also have incredible food writing, even though I feel like a lot of cookbook authors don't necessarily identify with being writers.”

“I got married two weeks before my mom passed away, and then a year later, I was receiving some kind of artistic success that I'd never had. All of these really beautiful things happened where I was in love and I had a career I loved, but it was all kind of under the shadow of this really dark and painful thing.”

“I was very much a work horse my whole life.”

“I was always being told to calm down, to chill out, to slow down. I was a bad toddler, I was a bad child, I was a bad teenager.”