Mary H.K. Choi Quotes

Some people just use beautiful things to just shop or to have a tribal feeling - 'Oh, blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Hermes; blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Saint Laurent; blah-blah blah' - because it's like a need, a tribe, recognition: 'Ahh, my Rolex.' But I run away from anything which is too recognizable - it's my nature.

Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.

I worry that every time I lay down my credit card of choice, it says something about me. About my social standing or how I see myself. The very colour of your card is an indication of where you stand in the wealth stakes.

'Be comfortable with who you are', reads the headline on the Hush Puppies poster. Are they mad? If people were comfortable with who they were, they'd never buy any products except the ones they needed, and then where would the advertising industry be?

It's no secret that in our society, and many before, people are trend followers. For some reason, they feel better about themselves if they are dressed in the latest fashion or have the newest tech gadget.

The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse - as a luxury befitting a young man.

In Europe, you would almost never have people with large amounts of income being happy with a two-volume vehicle like a hatchback or a minivan. They want to structurally show their societal position, which is why three volumes are so popular. They show 'I'm part of that hierarchy.'

I could never dream of being cool.

People always try to put a title or a symbol on you. If you work in a bank, you are a banker. For me, they see a co-founder of Facebook.

Many a family, in order to make a 'proper showing,' will commit itself for a larger and more expensive house than is needed, in an expensive neighborhood. Almost everyone would, it seems, like to keep up with the Joneses.

No-one has ever called me a cool dude. I'm somewhere between geek and normal.

You don't want to be that parent - the one who dresses his kid in a cloth sack when all the other kids are in Armani cloth sacks - especially in a time like ours, when materialism is not only rampant and ascendant but is fast becoming the only game in town.

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

It is clear from all these data that the interests of teenagers are not focused around studies, and that scholastic achievement is at most of minor importance in giving status or prestige to an adolescent in the eyes of other adolescents.

People recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.

We judge of entire nations by the productions of a few mechanical arts, and think we are talking of men, while we are boasting of their estates, their dress, and their palaces. The sense in which we apply the terms, great, and noble, high rank, and high life, show, that we have, on such occasions, transferred the idea of perfection from the character to the equipage; and that excellence itself is, in our esteem, a mere pageant, adorned at a great expense, by the labors of many workmen.

I'm basically a professional nerd, and I'm still not cool. I'm around people who are cool sometimes, and I know I'm not them. But that's OK; I don't care.

We're told that to be fly, you gotta have a fly car, the rims on your wheels, the fly jewels, and that to work a regular job and make legal money is uncool.

It's sad, the enslavement of the black underclass to designer labels - we're an age that cares more about Versace than Vermeer.

Some people are really proud of me, and some don't like it. I don't really know what to tell those people. It's like people that don't know me or people that aren't even my friends saying I've changed. I have two friends - exactly two friends. It's like, how can someone that's not even my friend say I've changed?

I've never been cool.

People look at Instagram and say they want money, they want this, they want that.

That's a thing you most look forward to as a kid. The newest clothes or the newest shoes. Definitely getting the newest shoes and bragging to your friends about it.

I ain't going to buy no iPhone.

Commercialism in the Western world has got us by the scruff of the neck. It's a technological takeover, and we can't even see it happening because we're too busy enjoying it.