Michelle Zauner Quotes

Michelle Zauner

Profession : Singer

Birth : March 29, 1989

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.

Michelle Zauner

Persimmons are pretty present in a lot of Asian cultures, as gifts that you give to people.

Michelle Zauner

I had seen an image of these hanging persimmons that are dried during the winter and turned into sweet, dried fruit. And I really like the idea of this very bitter, hard fruit before it's ripened - on display and slowly maturing and turning sweeter and letting its environment impact it. It felt like a very fitting metaphor for where I've come from.

Michelle Zauner

I knew that I wanted my third album to be the most drama and the strongest foot forward - every muscle flexing and using all the tools that you have in the toolbox.

Michelle Zauner

You know, I never went to music school, and it's always seen as this very proper, serious thing to compose a string arrangement.

Michelle Zauner

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

Michelle Zauner

Then, in high school, I had a kind of mental breakdown; I didn't want to go to school anymore. It felt pointless. It was around the same time that I became really interested in music.

Michelle Zauner

I was always interested in being a writer. Yet, at the time, it somehow seemed more unfeasible to be a writer than a musician.

Michelle Zauner

There's this thing where Asian parents force you to play an instrument at an early age, but god forbid you like it and want to pursue it professionally! But, as a kid, I never did choir, and didn't sing.

Michelle Zauner

I've always felt like I needed to experience some type of anguish in order to feel productive as an artist.

Michelle Zauner

Maybe it's because I'm an only child or just an extroverted person, and I'm a kind of a ham, you know?

Michelle Zauner

My mom always made me believe that people with only talent didn't go very far. Hard work was what made things possible.

Michelle Zauner

Initially it was so important for me to be credited as a producer, play all these instruments and be the sole writer on everything. I think especially as a woman, you want to be taken seriously as a musician, as a producer.

Michelle Zauner

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.

Michelle Zauner

I do really love New York. I feel like there are more Asian restaurants. Philly has a sick food scene, I don't want to diss it at all. But New York is so much bigger and there are more options.

Michelle Zauner

I think with any art making, there's a sense of urgency that you have for people to understand you.

Michelle Zauner

I really love MFK Fisher's food writing, and obviously Anthony Bourdain's food writing is exceptional, in particular 'A Cook's Tour'. I really love the short story that he writes about revisiting the coastal town in France of his childhood and the memories that he has of his father.

Michelle Zauner

I love food. It's been such a huge part of my life. In a way, I think I didn't even realize it until I wrote this book. Food brings me this great joy.

Michelle Zauner

My career has exceeded beyond all fantasy and expectations that I ever held.

Michelle Zauner