“By the time I was a teen, I was an expert at scanning people's faces, ...” — Crystal Hana Kim Quote

By the time I was a teen, I was an expert at scanning people's faces, always in search of eyes like mine. I devoured glossy magazines, ever mindful of the language we used to talk about beauty. The sections on how to apply makeup intrigued me most precisely because their audience never included me.

My grandmother raised me when I was little. I was born here, and my parents are immigrants; they needed someone to help take care of me because they were working a lot, so my grandmother came from Korea. So I'm very close with my grandmother, and I keep in touch with her a lot.

As a Korean American, I grew up yearning to see actors that looked like me. On the rare occasions I saw an Asian celebrity, I adored them unflaggingly.

I don't know if it's unique, but I know many Korean American people of my generation who want to know about their grandparents' lives in Korea, but their family members won't tell them because it's too painful. But my grandmother is just a natural storyteller, and she very openly spoke about really difficult times in her life.

It's amazing what sleep does for your looks.

I think confidence is a true form of beauty.

My beauty routine is basically plenty of sleep and lots of water.

Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness.

I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.