Michelle Zauner

Korean people tend to disavow measurements and supply only cryptic instructions along the lines of “add sesame oil until it tastes like Mom’s”

No matter how critical or cruel she could seem—constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations—I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.

My grief comes in waves and is usually triggered by something arbitrary.

Life is unfair, and sometimes it helps to irrationally blame someone for it.

Sometimes my grief feels as though I’ve been left alone in a room with no doors.

Food was how my mother expressed her love.

I remember the snacks Mom told me she ate when she was a kid and how I tried to imagine her at my age. I wanted to like all the things she did, to embody her completely

There’s no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.

I sent my mother photos of the different bodices and skirts over Kakao

If there was a god, it seemed my mother must have had her foot on his neck, demanding good things come my way.