Choi Quotes & Sayings

I couldn't let you believe we'd keep going, when we'd already lasted too long. — Susan Choi

You'll tell me what it feels, right? When you find Paris? — Con Template

I'll give you the moon and the stars, Princess ... and maybe a city to go along with it. — Con Template

Do you ever feel that we are only building sand castles? Why do so many things happen to us? I am afraid the little we have left will be swept away, too. Why bother? — Sook Nyul Choi

Your love will never conquer what this society raised them to be. — Con Template

One's life is short, but the life of the spirit is long. — Sook Nyul Choi

want to live someplace that — Mary H.K. Choi

Children are like fingers. No matter which finger you bite, it hurts. — Choi Woo-shik

Cause that's the thing about boomerangs, right? They come back even if they feel they shouldn't, they come back even if the world tries to stop them, they come back because they ultimately know where they belong ... and who they belong to. — Con Template

My wish is to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I will not resign myself to the usual lot of women who bow their heads and become concubines. — Trieu Thi Choi

I'd like to visit my friend and his family who live in Australia. That trip is long overdue. — Kenneth Choi

Holiness makes sin useless because it is truthful, just, faithful, righteous, godly, loving, meek, and enduring. — Joseph Choi

I've never written a book with an outline or a predetermined theme. It's only in retrospect that themes or subjects become identifiable. That's the fun of it: discovering what's next. I'm often surprised by plot developments I would not have dreamed of starting out, but that, in the course of the writing, come to seem inevitable. — Susan Choi

Sometimes, in the deepest moments, there are no words. There is only food. — Roy Choi

Our farmers make enough rice to feed all of us, yet we must eat millet and barley. All that rice goes to feed the Imperial soldiers sent the Japanese residents...some even gets sent back to Japan...and the prices they charge us for the little rice that remains! Did you see the look of satisfaction on Captain Narita's face as he looked at these coarse little cookies? — Sook Nyul Choi

My dad does watch my work now. My parents watch everything I'm on. I think the first time they saw something was 'Captain America,' and he called me, and he was so elated. — Kenneth Choi

Pain is the best instructor, but no one wants to go to his class. — Choi Hong Hi

I'm idealistic so my life outlook is to never give up. Even if something seems absolutely impossible, I will run as hard as I can go. — Choi Minho

The complexity of the world is so overwhelming and so present to everyone. — Susan Choi

Coup de foudre; perhaps it was real. One went from believing, when twenty, that it was the one kind of love that was real, to believing, once closer to forty, that it was not only fragile but false
the inferior, infantile, doomed love of twenty-year-olds. Somewhere between, the norms of one culture of love were discarded, and those of the other assumed. When did it happen, at midnight of one's thirty-first birthday? On the variable day that, while browsing a grocery-store aisle with a man, the repeating refrain of the rest of one's life for the first time resounds in one's ear? — Susan Choi

Principles are like sheaths. It doesn't have the sharp edge to cut something, but it can cover that sharp edge. So that no one gets hurt. — Choi Woo-seok

Something crossed his face, a pure motion like wind over water
I couldn't have guessed what emotion it was. "I'll miss you," he said. — Susan Choi

I collected X-Men, Spider-Man, and Daredevil comics. I definitely had a few Captain America comics lying around in those protective plastic baggies. — Kenneth Choi

But I didn't want to be anyone's green card ticket, meal ticket, cook, washing lady, housemaid, personal masseuse, baby machine, regularly-scheduled-hole in the mattress. Only to end up dead, discarded, buried in a ditch somewhere, dumped into the big, blue sea, all used up.
Boys should just stay home and fuck their mothers. — Angela S. Choi

We can not be swallowed up like those little pebbles. We aren't pebbles. We won't just quietly sink to the bottom. We can run, we can fight, and we can work. We are not helpless unless we let ourselves be. — Sook Nyul Choi

I've at times in my past been so unhappy, and thought, like, 'I would give anything for this not to be happening.' And, you know, as people say, time passes, and then you think, 'I'm kind of glad that happened to me.' — Susan Choi

You can always count on an asshole to be an asshole. — Angela S. Choi

There, see how the ocean swallows those little pebbles. We are helpless and insignificant, like the pebbles. The war comes, chases us from our homes, makes us refugees, and then swallows us up along with all our hopes and dreams. We just sink down to the bottom. Only then do we have peace. What's the sense of trying? What's the sense of studying?" She stared at the dark water, taking short breaths as her eyes filled with tears of sadness and helplessness. — Sook Nyul Choi

Graduate school is a really supportive environment, but in a way, it was only when that support vanished that I flourished. — Susan Choi

Harmony will prevail. After darkness, there will be light. The light cannot come without the darkness. Better days are bound to come now. — Sook Nyul Choi

Chicago is my hometown and will always have a special place in my heart. — Kenneth Choi

I learned then that my competitiveness is so strong I can't even control it. — Choi Minho

The most shocking act, closely examined, is just a louder version of some habitual gesture. — Susan Choi

Coffee?" Santangelo calls down to us. We both look up. He,Ben, and Raffy are hanging over the side.
"Is it espresso?" Anson Choi asks behind us.
"Freshly percolated," Ben answers. "You should see the gadgets they have up here."
Anson Choi aims a begging look at Griggs.
"You want to sell out over a coffee?" Griggs asks him with disgust.
"They've got muffins as well," I tell them. "Double chocolate chip. His mum made them."
Griggs gets up and holds out a hand to me. "Truce. — Melina Marchetta

We're an Ag college," I explain to them. "Not as good as the one in Yanco but we have livestock."
"Cows?" Anson Choi asks, covering his nose.
"Pigs, too. And horses. Great for growing tomatoes.
The Cadets are wanna-be soldiers. City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.
"I'm going to throw up," one of the guys says.
"Don't feel too bad," I explain. "Some of our lot did while they were laying out this stuff. Actually, right there where you're standing. — Melina Marchetta

I stopped writing short fiction early on - I was never really good at it, and I never liked the results. So I stopped trying to fit the material I was working with into these tidy little short fiction packages. — Susan Choi

Belize has a tropical climate and is quite affordable and is developing a reputation as an inexpensive Hawaii. If you want to hide away someplace that is extremely low-key, Placencia is perfect. San Pedro is more touristy and modernized. — Kenneth Choi

Why are instants of reunion so empty? Perhaps because they are so anticipated, too muffled already at the moment of their coming with every previous imagining to make any mark of their own.They refer backwards, to all the length of time that has refined itself as the prologue to cataclysm, and to all the flawed imaginings themselves, in each of which this moment is strangely dilated, expansive, arrested — Susan Choi

I always try to avoid looking at the section where my books would be shelved, but I do know that my most reliable neighbor to the right is Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening', which is dispiriting. That's a book I don't want to re-read. — Susan Choi

Nothing can be comparable to good health — Choi Hong Hi

Innocence as we understand it in our culture is very theatrical. The flip side is, if you're charming enough, you can get away with anything. — Susan Choi

A true Grandmaster is a person who starts the arts at a very young age and continues it until their body will no longer allows it. Then they still contribute mentally to the art. — Choi Hong Hi

I was the daughter of an immigrant, raised to feel that I needed to get excellent, flawless grades and a full scholarship and a graduate degree and a good job - all the stepping stones to conventional success. — Susan Choi

When I moved to Los Angeles, I figured I'm really going to make an attempt to become a real actor. And when I did that, I thought it was time for me to face my parents and tell them what I did. — Kenneth Choi

When I was three years old, I went to an orphanage, but because of the beatings, I ran away when I was five and lived alone by selling gum on the streets. For ten years, I lived like a fly. I was eventually able to graduate elementary and middle school through qualification examinations and the first thing that I ever liked was music. — Choi Sung-bong

I want to be acknowledged as not just a pretty idol who sings and dances on stage, but as an artist — Choi Soo-young

I didn't grasp that desire and duty could rival each other, least of all that they most often did. — Susan Choi

There's something that people misunderstand about screen quotas. It's not about rejecting or hating other countries' films, but about protecting our domestic film industry. — Min-sik Choi

There's no escape for us. We are like mice trapped in a dungeon of wildcats.We are Koreans; we are cursed race and there is no hope for us as long as the Japanese are around. — Sook Nyul Choi

My youth was the most stubborn, peremptory part of myself. In my most relaxed moments, it governed my being. It pricked up its ears at the banter of eighteen-year-olds on the street. It frankly examined their bodies. It did not know its place: that my youth governed me with such ease didn't mean I was young. It meant I was divided as if housing a stowaway soul, rife with itches and yens which demanded a stern vigilance. I didn't live thoughtlessly in my flesh anymore. My body had not, in its flesh, fundamentally changed quite so much as it now could intuit the change that would only be dodged by an untimely death, and to know both those bodies at once, the youthful, and the old, was to me the quintessence of being middle-aged. Now I saw all my selves, even those that did not yet exist, and the task was remembering which I presented to others. — Susan Choi

Through that windshield I saw a city that didn't know it was hungry and a reflection of a guy who was FREE. — Roy Choi

There is no promise in the world that is okay to break. — Choi Woo-shik

Well, your God is silent and sleeping while the Japanese are busy torturing and killing us Koreans. We are as helpless as flies and it is getting worse as the war goes on. — Sook Nyul Choi

At the moment, I think we each genuinely believed ourselves to be the protagonist, and the other a naive and pardonable walk-on whose role might even have a tragic end. Still, it was good to trade compassion in that large and chilly room, regardless if one of us, or perhaps both of us, would turn out to be mistaken. — Susan Choi

Sookan, don't look so sad and dark. I will never stop thinking of you. Nothing will end; nothing ever does. Everything good that touches our lives becomes part of us forever. You know that. — Sook Nyul Choi

To the image of the characters, I do change my appearance. For example, I gain weight and I lose weight sometimes, and I grow my hair and cut it. Acting is all about physical expression, so I need to change my appearance for all the characters. — Min-sik Choi

I know about women. I know that they're not men. — Choi Minho

If I'm not in the dead heat of working on something, I can end up spending tons and tons of time on the Web, and I hate it. I feel the same shame I did in grad school when I was pretty much addicted to reruns of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'. I wish someone would make the Web just go away. Just remove it from the earth. — Susan Choi

I start with characters, and then I start writing, and then, if I'm lucky, things start to happen. — Susan Choi

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a
groupie. — Melina Marchetta

Do you realize that our whole lives, every decision we've made, all the roads we've chosen - good, bad, big and small - everything has led us to this very moment in time? — Con Template

To help others to develop and succeed in life is a reward itself and only has value when nothing is expected in return. — Choi Hong Hi

Appetite knows what it craves, without cerebral embellishment. It tends not to waste any time laying hold of its tools. That was the thing I had recognised here: appetite. I recognised it precisely because, in a context like this, it was so unfamiliar. It had forced me to rule out everything else. And there was a second reason for my recognition, which because unprecedented was not recognition at all, but astounding discovery: Martha's face told me. I saw appetite there ... — Susan Choi

I think I can sing, but that does not mean I can actually sing. I fear that I'm like one of those 'American Idol' contestants who truly believe they are good and are actually dreadful. — Kenneth Choi

To my precious members, who I hope to be with forever, I love you and thank you so much. — Choi Soo-young

I didn't know you had a girlfriend, Griggs." Anson Choi feigns surprise. "What's her name?"
"I didn't actually catch her name," Griggs continues.
"Lily," Raffaela says over her shoulder and this time I give her a sideways look.
"Great to know that I'm in love with a girl with a cool name."
"It's Taylor's middle name," Raffaela calls back again. — Melina Marchetta

The entire time I was in Portland, which was the five years, I had absolutely no contact with any of my family. — Kenneth Choi

If you keep running away every time you are scared, then you will do nothing but hide your entire life. Is that really, how a person should live their life? The only way you can get over this fear is by fighting. No matter how scared or afraid you are, you cannot win without fighting. — Choi Young-Rae

For me, I never abandoned the truck. Even though I've opened other things, the truck is still the lifeblood of who I am. That's because I enjoy it. I believe in it. It's everything that I am. — Roy Choi

Portland is the perfect weekend getaway. I studied acting in Portland and lived there for five years. It's a small city with so much to do. There's beautiful scenery, a great bar scene, and so many fabulous restaurants. — Kenneth Choi

One line on the arm, one line on the heart. The bastards who stood by my side with two lines. They'll be the hardest farewells I'll have to make in my life and they're the luckiest fortune I've met in my lifetime. — Choi Yoon-young

And I remembered now, too, my inadvertent youthful condescension, when the woman had said, apologizing for some information she couldn't recall, "I still remember the coat I wore when I was five, but I have no idea what I ate for breakfast today." I'd laughed and smiled in warm sympathy. How sweet, I had thought, she remembers her coat. She must have loved it not to have forgotten. But the coat wouldn't ask any effort of preservation. Feeling ninety, and no longer five, there would be the real effort. Telling that five-year old girl, in her beautiful coat, You're all finished. Submerged. Obsolete.
We are ghosts of ourselves, and of others, and all of these ghosts appear perfectly real. — Susan Choi

Tell me, Choi Yoori ... are your lips as soft as they look? — Con Template

Will you take me into a world filled with timeless magic? — Con Template

What's your one wish tonight? — Con Template

It's still funny for me to think of myself as someone who writes historical fiction because it seems like a really fusty, musty term, and yet it clearly applies. — Susan Choi

If you don't give up your hopes and dreams, then there will always be a good ending. — Choi Minho

I admit that I've been beaten up so many times in films, but we do not fake it - we actually have to fight when we shoot to make it real and to save film and time. Even the props that are not real, like the bats are plastic, but they're still very hard, so it still hurts. — Min-sik Choi

No one said finding Paris would be easy; I only said it would be worth it. — Con Template

When I work, I like to just kind of stay quiet, stay to myself. I like to walk around a lot and figure out what's gonna happen in the scene and try to get my head straight. — Kenneth Choi

They keep us so hungry that we can't do anything but worry about where our next meal is coming from. They keep us hungry for so long that we are grateful for whatever little food we get. — Sook Nyul Choi

This is the premiere food symposium in the world. To quote you guys: 'Intended to invoke a sense of courage and urgency ... Enabling this year's symposium to become a venue where we can reflect on the stories and ideas that no one usually gets the opportunity to tell.' So I stand here with the guts to ask you, please, let's do something. Let's do something and feed those that we're not reaching collectively. — Roy Choi

When I filmed my episodes, the show hadn't aired yet, so there was no 'Glee' pandemonium. It was still untested. — Kenneth Choi

When you're working on a huge, elaborate set that took months to create, and you're surrounded by hundreds of extras, you better remember your lines and know what you're doing in a scene! — Kenneth Choi

My job is baseball. That's it. After, I'll talk to my country. I'm happy to do that. — Hee-seop Choi

In spring training I'm in every newspaper (in Korea) every day. In the regular season, they watch it on TV. — Hee-seop Choi

Comic fans are some of the toughest fans to please, and I'm one of them. — Kenneth Choi

I think 'Gatsby' is hobbled, in part, by its status as a Great American Novel. People kind of roll their eyes before they've even opened it, treat it with a 'been there, done that' attitude. I know I did. It took me years to re-open the novel and see how much I'd missed. — Susan Choi

Western ghosts are evil, but Korean ghosts are about making peace. That is part of our Korean psyche. — Min-sik Choi

I had opened the obvious drawer, the top drawer of the room's only dresser, and found myself gazing into a masculine cache of compressed, crumpled things. Wash-worn Brooks Brothers white cotton shorts now a pale shade of gray. Snake-tangled, unpaired argyle socks, all in bright Easter colors like clover ad mauve which still showed fairly crisp near the tops, but down toward the heels were marred by thread pills and snags, and at the toes by the outright abjection of holes. To see laid bare in their entirety those socks, of which I'd heretofore glimpsed only brief merry stripes, when a pant cuff rose up from the rim of a shoe, was like seeing the man himself fully exposed to me
naked. — Susan Choi

Neo: You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming?
Choi: All the time. It's called mescaline, it's the only way to fly — Matrix

It's pathetic, but I don't really remember my first time reading 'The Great Gatsby.' I must have read it in high school. I'm pretty sure I remember it being assigned, and I generally did the reading. But I don't remember having a reaction to the book, even though I loved literature, and other works made a lasting impression on me at that age. — Susan Choi

All sorts of creative communities are withering in New York because it's too hard to live here. It's ridiculous how expensive it is. — Susan Choi

With the Cubs, they've gone so long without a World Series championship, they wanted to win every day. I want that too, but I didn't feel comfortable. — Hee-seop Choi

I bet a chef could get more pussy than a guitar player right now. — Roy Choi

Seohyun's so pure that if Seohyun wasn't a singer, she'd still be singing nursery rhymes. Seohyun watches TV until 2am in the morning. What she watches is the cartoon channel. — Choi Soo-young

If I interview people, I would get to know many lives and experiences that I haven't been through myself. — Choi Minho

The very moment I admitted we were flirting, I lost patience for it. — Susan Choi

I promise it'll all be worth it. Every splendid, euphoric and magical moment of it will be worth it. — Con Template

The desperate hope that the patient will be healed ... That's the last treatment. — Choi Woo-shik