Quotes from Susan Choi

In high school, Karen and Sarah had done everything to their hair they could think of except take care of it. They had bleached it, shaved it, permed it, dyed it, as girls do when vandalizing themselves seems the best way of proving their bodies were theirs.

KAREN" STOOD OUTSIDE the Skylight bookstore in Los Angeles, waiting for her old friend, the author. Her old high school classmate, the author.

the bowl. Her mind startles her with the wish to be dead. To be dead, instead of in pain. Suicide, she realizes, isn't opting out of the future, it's opting out of the present, for who can see more of the future than that?

The most shocking act, closely examined, is just a louder version of some habitual gesture. No one is ever "out of character." That idea just makes Frazer laugh.

Why is solitude so fucking hard to achieve?

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.

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.'

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.