Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Michelle Zauner
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a South Korean singer Michelle Zauner.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
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.
My mom would frequently tell me to save your tears for when your mother dies.
I was a late bloomer when it came to reading. My parents didn't really read. Neither one of my parents went to college. I did not grow up with any literature in the house at all.
Being a caretaker for someone who's dying was really, really hard at 25.
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.
The biggest takeaway from a memoir is that you have to play fair. Within the first draft, I was writing very angrily because I had a lot of resentment and a lot to process. Through revision is where a lot of learning happened and a lot of forgiveness happened.
Food in general is really important for any diaspora, and it's really important for Korean people. This was a connection my mom and I could always have together that made her feel like I was more hers.
I never really wanted to be a journalist, honestly. I always wanted to be a writer, and I thought the only way to apply that interest was with journalism - when you're young and you want to be a writer, it seems like the most practical thing to do with those types of ambitions.
There was a couple weeks when I was like, I'm going vegan and gluten free. Then I was trying all these weird diets because I think there was this element of control over my surroundings that that gave me.
I never made kimchi before. I talk about my first time making it in the book, and I'm not a big baker, but I imagine it's like a similar kind of feeling for a lot of people who are bakers where it's just something that takes time. There's so much space to be reflective and meditative.
My records have a lot of collaborators on them, and when you're writing a book, it's a very insular process that's very confusing and dark. It's a lot of writing and rewriting in a way that I don't do so much when I'm writing songs.
I've been lucky to come up when there's such a huge explosion of women, and especially Asian women, in music.
Sometimes I can really agonize over a creative project and forget that it's essentially professional play, you know?
When I was growing up, I didn't realize that the idiosyncrasies of my mother's character had something to do with our culture. After growing up and reflecting and making more Asian-American friends, I learned that a lot this is something a lot of people grow up with.
I feel so overwhelmed by the kind of double hitter of a successful book and record. I just assumed at least one of them... would hopefully stick. So it's nice that both did so well.
When you're looking back at your ancestral history or the cultural context of your identity, it's natural to search for that in the food.
Even as a teenager, when I made mix CDs for people, it all had this sort of track flow: I like to start off very in-your-face, and kind of chill out towards the end and have this almost, like, denouement.
One thing that's nice about writing a book about food is - unless it's from a specific place - you can revisit things easily by preparing the dish. The sensory detail that comes from interacting with that is something that can be recreated pretty easily.
I only wanted to play the guitar so I could write music. As soon as I learned my first three chords I wrote my first song. It was just a tool to get me to be able to do the thing that I wanted to do.
I don't really listen to podcasts - I like one podcast and it's called Song Exploder.
I think growing up, I didn't ever attempt to define my Koreanness. It was just this intrinsic part of me.
I'm a huge fan of the Korean attitude toward service and infrastructure, which is shaped by a preference for speed and efficiency, values I truly yearn for in the US.
When I started doing press after college, I never got asked about my racial identity; I was asked more about being a girl in music.
A lot of water and air signs that are just like, trying to have a lowkey conversation. Fire sign enters the room with no chill. I just have no chill.
My relationship to music is such an essential part of who I am, and was a big part of my relationship with my mom.
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.
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.
But for a song like 'Paprika,' I typically feel like I need to experience anguish a lot of the time to feel like I've put in enough hard work.
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.
I quit music and decided I was going to work a 9-to-5 job in advertising... which in New York City is more like, 8-to-7.
One thing that was pretty eye-opening to me was that red pepper came from the New World in the 15th or 16th century. So these things that we think of as inherently Korean actually have an even longer history than that.
I never thought I would be able to play in Seoul, the city where my mother was raised and I was born, and I was able to perform for my aunt.
I just have to live my life knowing that there could be a good chance that I might die in middle age.
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.
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?'
I was very much a work horse my whole life.
I grew up playing video games, since I was probably five years old.
If you wrote a crummy line or maybe didn't sing to the best of your ability, there's layers of 10 different instruments all working to convey something. In writing prose for the memoir, if it's not working, it's just not working. It's harder to figure out how to fix it.
I started going to chess clubs when I was in fourth grade. From fourth grade to seventh grade, I was in chess club.
When my mom was sick and in the hospital, I did for the first time feel really bad that a lot of men aren't taught how to take care of other people very well. It's not as important of a skill for them as other things, in the same way that I really resent not being given a toolbox when I was younger.
I'm a very impatient person. I like things to be done. So I complete a lot of projects, but it helps to partner or collaborate with someone who's the opposite because they can tell me when to slow down.
One of my more recent favorite memories is of traveling to Jeonju with my aunt and uncle. After my mother passed away, my aunt and I became a lot closer, and I've really grown to cherish the relationship we formed together as adults.
I think something I explore a little bit in my music is how there's this majestic, natural beauty in the Pacific Northwest, but also this kind of underlying eeriness.
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.
One thing that I've always tried to do is create lifts - the moment that you have a rush of feelings. That's always something that I'm trying to communicate in music, and particularly the style of music that I write for Japanese Breakfast: I'm always trying to build things up into each other.
I have naturally always been a grossly oversharing type of person.
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.
I feel like there are a number of indie artists... as they grow, it makes the most sense for them to pivot to pop, to become bigger artists. And I feel like that's when people get really bad, you know? I didn't want to fall into that pitfall.
So chess is kind of this nice thing that I have no real aspiration for. It's just a frivolous thing I can enjoy.
There are so many different things that lend themselves to what makes a song magical, that go beyond just the lyrics or the composition. But arrangement and production and performance have such huge stakes in what makes that sort of lightning-in-a-bottle moment.
I finished the rough draft of 'Crying in H Mart' in July of 2020. My editor had it for five to six months, so I was free from it for a little while. I decided to take that time to start working on a new album.
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 felt like I could never write nonfiction, because I would have to spend so many pages explaining my ethnic background, and that wasn't really the story that I ever was interested in telling.
Soft Sounds' was about disassociating to preserve my mental health.
When I write a song, that process is sort of entwined with a lyric or a chord progression that suits the vibe, and that'll work off each other.
I've always felt like I needed to experience some type of anguish in order to feel productive as an artist.
I read Lorrie Moore and Marilynne Robinson and Jhumpa Lahiri and Richard Ford, John Updike, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Nabokov - all of whom I really fell in love with.
My favorite thing that I'm learning, in particular, is that the type of love between an immigrant parent and their child growing up in America is a particular nuanced type of love.
I love kitchenware. I'm very frugal and I don't buy a lot of things, but I'm frivolous when it comes to buying groceries and kitchenware.
I just miss the heartbeat of the band and crew. Watching everyone have their individualized tasks, and it all coming together to accomplish something huge every single night. Of course, seeing the kids and having songs that you wrote some back to you and yeah, just getting to do it all.
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