Su-chin Pak

“I feel no shame getting in bed at nine.”

“My parents are small business owners, and the Korean community, like a lot of immigrant communities, is very much owner-driven.”

“Live theater makes me nervous. I feel like I have to fake emotions, because the actors can see me.”

“Asian-Americans often struggle to be good sons and daughters, but it's ultimately your life. In the end, you have to find what you want.”

“I always thought I'd become an immigration lawyer.”

“Just as you would if you wanted to eat healthier or take better care of your skin, the most important thing you can do when buying something is to turn over the bottle and get informed about the ingredients. Many items we use daily are full of unpronounceable chemicals.”

“I did MTV so long because it's been really hard to find a place that has been able to keep my interests where I can do more than one beat.”

“Conversations about money, culture, power, class - it's at the center of my identity. I think it's a combination of being born to immigrant parents, growing up relatively poor, and really living in a world where formal institutions, like banks and anywhere that you had to sign a contract, was really feared and avoided at all costs.”

“I had never been out of the Bay Area before. It was very traumatic moving to New York.”

“The Hester Street Fair is kind of like a tiny baby DailyCandy market every week in the Lower East Side.”

“Good Charlotte are a band with punk values - they look it, they grew up on the music, and they believe in the punk ethos.”

“Looking in a mirror and telling yourself to feel better doesn't work when you're a girl, but finding something that you love to do, something that makes you a better person like volunteering to help others, will definitely make a difference.”

“People will talk about money in the general sense, but not in the specific sense of, like, where'd you fail, how'd you succeed, how'd you do it.”

“I think that if you know people who are performers on stage and actresses or whatever it may be, the bottom line is what you do on stage. You just take on a different persona - that's what makes her so successful. Lights come on, and suddenly, it's Britney Spears, and the lights go off, and she's just Britney.”

“I am a permanent legal resident of this country, I was born in Korea; my parents came to America for a better life for our family, I've lived here nearly my whole life, and even though I consider myself through and through Korean and American, I guess when it comes down to it, anyone can take away my identity. It doesn't belong to me.”

“Man, it's hard living in N.Y.C. - even when you have money in your pockets.”

“I always tell kids to find what they're passionate about.”

“My parents own a restaurant in downtown Oakland - Garden House - and I started working there at 8. I'd work the cash register while people looked at me skeptically. Free child labor!”

“There was never a book, a magazine, a movie, a television show that spoke to my experience as a bicultural teen. I could find a million articles on finding the perfect prom dress or getting the guy of your dreams, but how about 'Ten Sure Fire Steps to Being the Perfect Korean Daughter and Not Be a Freak at Your High School?'”

“Every time I get caught on the subway around 3 or 4 during the school year, it's definitely dicey. I get a lot of like - 'Yo, are you that girl?' Then I have to go eight stops with them.”