Quotes from Michelle Zauner

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 think growing up, I didn't ever attempt to define my Koreanness. It was just this intrinsic part of me.

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'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.

I struggle to learn a Dolly Parton cover with three key changes, but boy does it make me happy. I dare you to listen to 'Here You Come Again' without smiling.

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 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.

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.

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.

There was a chapter of the pandemic where I was going all out for themed meals and watching a variety of YouTube vloggers that gave a window into their world of cooking.

Soft Sounds' was about disassociating to preserve my mental health.

I've never felt so physically and emotionally and mentally drained than I have on our shoots.

I just have to live my life knowing that there could be a good chance that I might die in middle age.

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

But I still definitely go to H Mart probably like once or twice a week to get my groceries. It's a very special place to me.

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.

Soft Sounds' was really hard for me. I was petrified of the 'sophomore slump' so I created an environment to best combat that self-doubt and feelings that my first album was a real fluke.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

With Jubilee I had a natural interest to write about something on the opposite end of human experience - a real celebration of release and joy, which is in some ways an unexpected theme for the indie rock genre in general.

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.