Jean Kyoung Frazier > Quotes

“I realized how avoidance was the most attention you could give something”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“I think some people are just born broken. I think about life as one big Laundromat and some people just have one little bag to do—it’ll only take them a quick cycle to get through—but others, they have bags and bags of it, and it’s just so much that it’s overwhelming to even think about starting. Is there even enough laundry detergent to get everything clean?”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Did she still miss me sometimes like I missed her—missing that had no electricity, no lightning, or thunder, a missing like a hand digging into an empty chip bag searching for crumbs, any last salty bit, a missing more like mourning.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“The man was probably Jesus and he was probably praying, but I chose to ignore those things—you didn’t have to be religious to love the sun and the way it felt against your skin, to have a moment so beautiful and pure that it brought you to your knees.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“I would have found something else to lose myself in. If you were pushed off a cliff, you’d grab hold of anything resembling safety.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“But like when you’re in a people-packed space and there’s not a single face that looks at you for longer than a second—it’s not invisibility, it’s worse, they see you, they just have already decided in that second that there’s nothing about you that’s worth knowing, that kind of small. I”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“I've been to so many places and not a single one has saved me.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“As I lay in bed every night it felt like an invisible hippo was sitting on my chest, and I couldn’t help but think: I am wasting my life.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Soon, you'll have your own beautiful boy or girl who will look at you with their perfect little face and you'll feel love and hope and, mostly, you'll feel the weight of everything that's ever happened to you and everything that will ever happen to them and you'll want to run.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“My head’s a mess. Everywhere I go, I seem to find a way to trap myself. Most days, I can ignore it, but like anything you leave open and forgotten, it begins to rot. There are just too many thoughts, memories. I can’t look at anything and not think of something else.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Han was a sickness of the soul, an acceptance of having a life that would be filled with sorrow and resentment and knowing that deep down, despite this acceptance, despite cold and hard facts that proved life was long and full of undeserved miseries, “hope” was still a word that carried warmth and meaning.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“I wanted to be the type of person that walked with their back straight, the dirt under their fingernails pure. I didn't want to be a chain saw, I wanted to be a plastic baggie. No shredding, just holding.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Because you know what I’ve learned, no matter how long I wait? That I will never be someone that is effortlessly good, it’ll always be hard work for me, and I’m not that strong.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Well, what do you like doing?” This was the most painful question he could ask, maybe because I knew how I would answer it—I liked eating cereal early in the morning on the front steps of the house, seeing how sure and confident Mom’s hands moved when she folded laundry, watching TV on mute while I listened to my iPod, reading under trees and watching sunlight leak through the leaves above and cast strange patterns on my skin and the pages, pulling off my jeans the minute I got home, Gummy Bears, I liked after we fucked, when we just lay in each other’s arms, not speaking—none of these answers were what he was looking for. I never applied to any colleges, never was able to answer the question of my future purpose”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“He had his problems,” she said, “there’s no denying that. But none of that is your fault and nothing is decided. It’s up to you to be more than him.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“I lied often. It was just simpler that way. As a little kid, I remember being told repeatedly that lying was bad, lying never fixed anything, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and never lied. But no one ever told me how wonderful and easy it was to lie, how many conversations it would save me from and the stares it would avert—“Yeah, I’m fine!” “What? No, I’m not mad!” “Don’t worry, it’s okay!”—and did Abraham Lincoln really never, ever lie? In bed at night during the Civil War, did he toss and turn and soak his sheets with sweat and eventually wake Mary Todd to tell her, “Hold me, I’m scared, I think I fucked up,” or did he lie awake and sweat quietly, working his hardest to remain still, to keep his mouth shut, to let Mary Todd sleep soundly and unaware?”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Because the reality is, I’ve been to so many places and not a single one has saved me. And I need Los Angeles to save me. I need this place to work this time.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“People will always love telling you how you’re supposed to be feeling and it will always make you feel less than when you don’t feel it. I’m sorry if I was being one of those people.” She shook her head. “How old are you?” “Eighteen.” “I’ll tell you what I wish someone told me when I was eighteen—it never goes away.” “What is ‘it,’ exactly?” “All of it, any of it, just it.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“There was a plane in the sky and I was trying to guess how many people were inside it. I pictured every seat, every person, and I wondered about their names, ages, jobs, what they were listening to on their iPods, where they were coming from, who they were going home to. I hoped they all had someone waiting for them at the airport who’d smile at them the second they walked into Baggage Claim, who’d hug them and tell them they missed them and”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“What do you mean, you never have a chance to talk to me? We see each other all the time.” I patted the bed. “We live together.” “Yeah, exactly. And that’s about it.” He was off the bed now, pacing, scratching the side of his neck, like he always did when he was nervous. “We see each other all the time, but we never talk. The little we do is about nothing; I mention the baby, our baby, and you turn to stone.” Billy stopped pacing and looked away from me to a point above my head, a blank wall—my room had no decorations. “I’m so lonely.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Maybe if I had kept going to those meetings I would’ve learned all the answers to all the questions I had. Like: Where am I going and how do I get there? What have I done and what will I continue to do? Will I ever wake up and look in the mirror and feel good about the person staring back at me?”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Her name was Jenny Hauser and every Wednesday I put pickles on her pizza.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“I began to picture the world without me in it.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“The doctor standing above me was an old man with hair coming out of his nose and ears....His name tag literally read Dr. Oldman and I would've laughed if I hadn't been lying on my back, shirt up, sweaty and alone.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Do you think I don’t feel you get up in the middle of the night and come back hours later?” He was still crying and his voice was cracking. He had to stop in the middle of his sentence to wipe his runny nose on the sleeve of his shirt. “I haven’t said anything and I haven’t gone inside the shed because I believe in privacy and I know you’re struggling, I know your dad dying has been hard on you—” “It hasn’t been hard on me.” “Why don’t you talk to me anymore? We used to talk all the time. We would just lie in bed holding each other and telling the other every little detail about our day, stories from before we knew each other, everything we hoped we would do together. Do you remember that? I think about it all the time.” I did think about those days. Maybe not all the time, but I did think about them. I was hurt that he even had to ask, that he couldn’t trust the beauty of those moments, that he didn’t know that in those moments I had been so happy I was almost sad, knowing that those moments would end and I couldn’t live forever in that bed with him. “I do remember,” I said. “I just miss you so much. I know you’re going through a tough time, but so am I, I hate this. Have I done something to get us here?” He pushed himself up and crawled over to me, grabbed my hands again, but softer this time. “Tell me what I’ve done and I’ll fix it.” “You haven’t done anything.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Dad used to make me tea at night during the pregnancy whenever I was feeling sick.” “Really?” I removed her hands from my stomach. “He did that?” “Yup. He even bought me a bunch of different flavors so I wouldn’t get bored with any of them. He’d bring me a steaming cup in bed and tell me to close my eyes, see if I could guess the flavor.” It was hard to picture this. Him putting water in a pot, boiling it, steeping a mug with Earl Grey, English Breakfast, chamomile. I couldn’t even picture him in the checkout lane at the grocery store with anything other than Miller Lite and jelly beans. That man bringing tea to his pregnant wife wasn’t the same as the one who once picked me up from school two hours late, with crushed Miller Lite cans and gum wrappers covering the floor of his car, the front of his gray gym shorts soaked in piss, shouting over and over, “Get in, we’re going to Disneyland.” I thought about telling Mom this memory, reminding her of that other man. “Or is it something else?” she asked. “What can I do?” She would never be able to help me. Her loyalties would always lie with him, this dead man who showed her sides he never showed to me.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“But some days, I don't even make it an hour. I get out of bed, go downstairs, and I need to pour myself a drink, Because you know what I've learned, no matter how long I wait? That I will never be someone that is effortlessly good, it'll always be hard work for me, and I'm not that strong.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“Dad used to carry a briefcase, even when he was working jobs like graveyard-shift mall security, office janitor, mover—and there was an odd stint when he had a paper route—he’d put his briefcase into the bike’s front basket as he cruised around the neighborhood tossing the L.A. Times into people’s front yards. The briefcase never had much in it: a sci-fi paperback, a few sheets of paper, pens stolen from dentists’ offices and car dealerships, jelly beans. Dad would put a couple green ones in my hand, my favorite, and say, “You need the briefcase. People don’t take you seriously without the briefcase. How would it look if I was walking around with just a pack of jelly beans in my hand?”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“all talk, though, something to occupy our minds and fill our sleep with big, bright images. Billy was content with our life, what we had was more than enough for him, and I was pretty sure it was enough for me too.”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl

“He looked back at me and then I was the one that wanted to look away. “Sometimes I’ll stand in front of that mirror talking to myself. I’ll tell myself stories about my day, or stories from my past, my future, things I dream about, that I can only see when I close my eyes. When I get tired of talking about myself, I’ll pick up something to read out loud. Books, newspaper articles, receipts, ingredients on the backs of snack foods—did you know on Goldfish bags in addition to all the chemicals and shit, it says ‘Made with smiles’?” Billy himself smiled for a second at that, but then seemed to remember who he was talking to. “Basically, I say everything that I should be saying to you.” It was impossible not to hear the anger”
― Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl