Margaret cho quotes

I'm always too fat. And I always look terrible. But I love the theater of the red carpet.

I am star-struck but also I've known a lot of people for a long time. Like I'm super star-struck by Grant Lee Phillips and Jon Brion but I've known them for 17 years. So it's kinda like weird to be star-struck still, but I still am!

The newest victims of the nation's foreclosure crisis are pets, which is extremely distressing to me.

Silence equals nonexistence. If I don't raise my voice, it's like I never existed.

Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else's life forever.

Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion.

I grew up a witness to gay politics in its early days. I remember seeing Harvey Milk and been moved by him.

I went to a performance-art high school, and a teacher there was signing me up for open-mic nights at the comedy club. I think about it now, and I think, 'Well, that may be inappropriate,' but it was great!'

I don't want to hurt anybody because of their looks. That's been used to hurt me so much.

I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose.

I thought I was so ugly for so long, and I wasted so much of my life on this dumb notion.

Snooki is really beautiful and looks quite like Elizabeth Taylor in 'Cleopatra.' She has the same bone structure. I'm kind of obsessed with 'Jersey Shore.' People don't give them enough credit for how entertaining they are.

I don't think I'm gay. I don't think I'm straight. I think I'm just slutty. Where's my parade?

If you have sex, it should be for you, not for the other person.

Pot is an insidious drug because it can steal your life away from you, without you even being aware of it. I had a love affair with pot for ten years. Pot was my most devoted partner.

Let's not hate ourselves. We are all we have. We cannot change anything until we accept that. I cannot do this alone. I don't love myself enough to do it alone, but I can do it if we have a pact, if I am keeping up my end of the bargain. I have been a longtime perpetrator of hate crimes against myself, and I am turning myself in. I have had enough.

Maybe I wanted to hear it so badly that my ears betrayed my mind in order to secure my heart.

It's completely unsexy [Yello, "Oh Yeah" 1985]. It does capture that weird '80s materialism and "We're gonna get it on now" vibe. But it's a very juvenile approach. It also became a weird signal for comedy, in the sense that when you heard the song, it meant comedy was happening on screen. I feel like this song was probably done in a couple of minutes in a studio.

You don't become a Republican until you lose all your baby teeth and fall down a lot and get the croup and then become angry and bitter.

I knew I was crazy because I was watching Jesus Christ Superstar and the part where Jesus carries the cross up the mountain, I actually said to myself, "Wow! That must be a really good workout! Yeah, because you're doing arms and cardio!"

There's lot of social censorship now, especially in this era of ubiquitous social media.

The first thing you lose on a diet is brain mass.

My mother goes crazy over babies. Some people just do. They love 'em! I never have. Babies scare me more than anything. They're tiny and fragile and impressionable - and someone else's! As much as I hate borrowing stuff, that is how much I hate holding other people's babies. It's too much responsibility.

Love is the big booming beat which covers up the noise of hate.

White fragility! White people are so sensitive about race and racial conversations. I feel like I'm always walking on eggshells when I'm around white people.

I think the best way to get over your body issues is to just flaunt your body at every opportunity.

Things that are in "bad taste" are often renegade and rebellious. They go against the status quo, and the laws of decorum and modesty. And that can be really thrilling.

That's the nature of comedy. You always want to be improving and growing and changing with what's happening in the world. That's when comedy is most effective.

Try to love someone who you want to hate, because they are just like you, somewhere inside, in a way you may never expect, in a way that resounds so deeply within you that you cannot believe it.

Your goal is to write that masterpiece. Yello's masterpiece was "Oh Yeah." Whatever I say about the song doesn't matter, because it has a huge impact on how we remember the era.

Why can't all different types of women be considered beautiful? Why can't we can't we all be considered possible love interests?

The label of tasteful or tasteless is so often used to silence people and to maintain the status quo. It's used to shame people for not following the commonly accepted routine, for not aligning themselves with the status quo.

Thankfully, beauty is easier to remove than apply, and a swipe of demaquillage in the right direction and you are you once again.

We should retain our anger in the face of injustice and not be shamed by that.

That we are selfish gives us the opportunity to gain the power so that, in time, we might be selfless. To give back what we have learned. To teach what we know, and shorten the journey for those who will come after us.

It's good to be able to laugh at yourself and the problems you face in life. Sense of humor can save you.

In my life, I don't wear makeup, I don't care about any of the trappings of the "feminine," or how I look in photographs. To me, it's irrelevant, which I think is really shocking to people in the industry that I'm in, because it's like, "You should always look good", but I honestly don't care. It's not important to me.

If public figures came out of the closet, then the LGBT kids who saw them on TV would feel safe, before they even knew why they felt dangerous. Maybe if enough people came out of the closet, gay kids would never feel dangerous. Maybe we could have a world where we could all just live. We may not all agree, but why can't we just all live?

Success is meaningless if you can't sleep at night because of harsh things said, petty secrets sharpened against hard and stony regret, just waiting to be plunged into the soft underbelly of a 'friendship.'

Korean children get a lot of fuss made over them, I guess because life was tough in the old country, and it was a big deal if you survived. There's a big party thrown when you are 100 days old, followed by another when you make it to one whole year.

We women are constantly at war with our bodies, it is hard to find amnesty for ourselves.

If you're a songwriter, you want to write a song like "Oh Yeah" that radically shifts everything. You can definitely retire on that song. You want to have something you can put in your songbook that everybody can recognize, whether it's a good or bad thing.

In America, I'm a foreigner because of my Korean heritage. In Asia, because I was born in America, I'm a foreigner. I'm always a foreigner.

Interventions are really emotionally exhausting and I would never ever want to have one. In the same way, I would never want to have a surprise birthday party. That would be horrible.

To start telling people that you're beautiful, or just feel beautiful, just start acting like you are the most beautiful woman in the world. And it really improves everything! Because your sort of psyche responds to it - like this is truthful!

Being called ugly and fat and disgusting to look at from the time I could barely understand what the words meant has scarred me so deep inside that I have learned to hunt, stalk, claim, own and defend my own loveliness.

When people think the world of you, be careful with them.

I have a box of awards in the closet. I think it is weird to put them out. I might if I had an Emmy or Oscar, but I don't.

My attitude toward peace does not depend on which war we are discussing. I think that words should do the work of bombs.

I get up around 7 a.m. That's very early for a stand-up comic. Then I'll have breakfast with my husband, the artist Al Ridenour, take my three dogs for a walk and commence with my work.

I’m not playing the race card. I’m playing the rice card.

I have so much hate that it has turned into love.

I think white people like to tell Asian people how they should feel about race because they're too scared to tell black people.

You have to have a very holler-y sensibility. So they [the audience] know there's something worth listening to.

My inclination during sex always is to use sex toys. That's not something men are often used to.

I think political correctness really does help us when it serves us but it doesn't help us when it silences us.

I was about 17 or 18 and there were a lot of clubs and dancing. It was the beginning of rave culture and a lot of ecstasy. Because of all the drugs, there are certain songs that make me feel high.

I have a song about how much I hate emojis and the lazy thinking of people who use them. I wish that more people had respect for the English language.

I was like, Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized...I'm just slutty. Where's my parade?

Homophobia is a tough one. In some places it's actually very OK to be homophobic. Comedy clubs in general are very unsafe spaces for LGBT, for women, for Asian people. So my goal in comedy has sort of been to make this a safe space for people who were like me.

I think that failure is just as important as success. In a way, failure is a kind of success if you can look at it in the right way, if you can accept it and enjoy it in the right way.

It's important to feel beautiful; it's political to feel beautiful.

I'd like to put across the notion that bad taste is actually good for you.

It's hard to find peace with your thighs, but when they chafe, try to be grateful for them. Your thighs let you run and get you where you want to go. I have not just thigh peace but thigh happiness, and it begins with thigh gratitude.

My boyfriend and I live together, which means we don't have sex - ever. Now that the milk is free, we've both become lactose intolerant.

I'm a survivor. But I'm also victim, too. Surviving has the connotation that you've been through it, you lived through it and that's wonderful - but a victim is what I was. "Survivor" is the more healing way to look at it.

[Fur] is really ridiculous. It's outrageous. We're not living in igloos. We don't need to trade pelts anymore. There is this diabolical idea that fur is fashionable. It's not. It's death. There's no excuse for it.

I think I started out okay but with AIDS came a great deal of silence about gayness and this period of lose and morning, but at the same time a kind of feeling like you wanted to get back into the closet because being gay was such a terrible thing at that point.

Just because you are blind and unable to see my beauty doesn't mean it does not exist.

I am into belly dancing. I used to only hang with comics. Now I have friends who are dancers, and my whole house has a harem feel.

I love New York. I love working here.

My family has been deeply affected by the split of Korea, which divided it in half, basically, before I was born. There's no way to connect with my family now who are in North Korea because it's so isolated. We don't even know who is still there and who is alive, and if they are, what they are doing. Comedy is the only weapon I have to battle this totalitarianism.

I've always been an ajumma, but when you get older, the culture we were brought up in works in our favor where aging is good, combatting the Hollywood idea that aging is bad. I'm very grateful for that.

Silence is so often applauded and those who speak out are often called tasteless.

I love Wilco's "I'm the Man Who Loves You." Nels Cline has that weird guitar slide at the beginning and the song is whispered actually.

I voice my opinions on social media and I have people threatening me with violence. It is troubling but I can fight back, which is good.

I always thought that people told you that you're beautiful-that this was a title that was bestowed upon you. [...] I think that it's time to take this power into our own hands and to say, "You know what? I'm beautiful. I just am. And that's my light. I'm just a beautiful woman."

I have learned to love that which is meant to harm me, so that I can stand in the way of those who are less strong. I can take the bullets for those who aren't able to.

Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary.

If you say you're not a feminist, you're almost denying your own existence.

There are definitely racial problems in this country [the USA]. Comedy is a way we can figure out how to solve it, and how to solve it without making people really angry.

I urge you all today, especially today during these times of chaos and war, to love yourself without reservations and to love each other without restraint. Unless you're into leather.

Since I became a dancer, I have felt much better about myself.

The best tattooists are in San Francisco, and they're kind of like my family now. I'm always excited to come back to San Francisco.

I want Jesus to come back and say 'THATS NOT WHAT I MEANT'" -

People drain me, even the closest of friends, and I find loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in.

I definitely support free speech.

Sex in general, for me, is a lot of different aspects of humanity, not just my relationships. It's my relationship to myself and my body.

I think sex is really about the self, and really a self-reflection.

You have to constantly recreate yourself in show business, which is a very fast thing, especially now with the tremendous speed of social media. There are so many personalities, so many different kinds of comedy that you can access, so it’s definitely important to stake your claim and say who you are.

I was raised to be self-conscious about weight. Then as I got older and started doing television, it became a career issue, like, 'You have to lose weight or you'll lose that job.'

The stuff I do and say onstage I can do easily. As a performer, that comes easily. But being social offstage, it's not easy for me.

Humanity is a natural foil for inhumanity, and humanity is what will ultimately keep us going when all else has failed.

I think that sometimes people [who overreact or lash out] will hang on to their point just because they're so embarrassed that they made it. They won't set it down because they are the authors of these [disproportionate responses] and they have a lot to be embarrassed about.

I just think women are funnier than men.

I will never stop complaining.

I love heavily tattooed women. I imagine their lives are filled with sensuality and excess, madness and generosity, impulsive natures and fights. They look like they have endured much pain and sadness, yet have the ability to transcend all of it by documenting it on the body

I think reality television is such a special talent.

Grow up and let anyone try to content with the adult you.

I love tattooed women, maybe because they are uncontrollable, they are themselves to the point of drawing symbols of their power on their skin. Talk about owning your own body, being in your body, claiming yourself. I love it. When the world is in an uproar over whether women should have a choice or not when it comes to their own bodies, being tattooed is one of the most visible choices of all.

My former bullies pay extra to come backstage and meet me after shows, and I pretend not to know them in front of their friends. It is the most divine pleasure to exact the revenge of the brutalized child that resides within.

One place that I really feel comfortable is being a comedienne. I'm very socially inept. There's so many things that I can not do in life, and this is, like, the one thing that I have mastery over. It's my world. And anybody who's coming to the show, it's like they're coming because they know that this is my world.

If you are a woman, if you are a person of color, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.

There's vulnerability - so I have to make sure the audience is certain that I know what I'm doing. There's vulnerability there because my heart is open, but at the same time I definitely have a lot of "weapons" at my disposal. I have all the language, I have all of the moment - I have all of that to spar with somebody, to take anything on.

I can't drag myself away from 'Final Cut Pro.' It is a digital video editing system. I am obsessed with it, but I am always away from home, and I can't use it.

All the songs on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are the encapsulation of heterosexual love. I have different records for gay sex.

I started [performing] so young that it might have just been that I kind of had to grow up and make people understand that I was worth listening to, even though I was a child.

I'm lucky that I have good genetics. Like you said, it just gets better as I get older.

The power of visibility can never be underestimated.

As a woman of color you have little more permission to go deeper and question things because your identity, in a way, is a shield. But if you come at it from a minority status, my person, who I am, softens the blow of whatever it is that I'm saying, because I am that.

I've always wanted to have tattoos. I grew up around people who were very tattooed. It's a self-expression thing; it's also helped me claim my body as my own. So I think it's really positive. It's really joyful.

Try to put your happiness before anyone else's, because you may never have done so in your entire life, if you really think about it, if you are really honest with yourself.

When it comes to children, my mom doesn't believe in borders. She loves all children, and that's a good example of mothering the world. I need to do that, but before I can, I need to get over my fear of kids in the first place.

It’s like your batteries get low, and you need to charge them on someone else’s story.

I get a lot from great '90s artists like Juliana Hatfield, The Pixies, and bands like That Dog and The Breeders.

I've spent so much time feeling ugly and being treated as ugly as a result. But I changed my attitude and said, “I’m beautiful because I love everybody as much as I can. I’m beautiful because I have wonderful friends. And I’m beautiful because I say I am. I’ve earned it, and I’m gonna be it.

If I'm talking to a guy who's straight and cute and single, I'm like 'are you a unicorn?'

When you feel powerful, you are willing to stand up for your rights, you are willing to stand up for what you believe in, you're more willing to stand up and be counted.

I love fashion, I'm actually a pretty talented seamstress, so I can make stuff for myself, but that's really time-consuming.

Let's not hate ourselves. We are all we have. ... I have been a longtime perpetrator of hate crimes against myself, and I am turning myself in. I have had enough.

I don't like people telling other people what to do. Sex work for a lot of women is really important, especially in countries where women don't have a lot of power. Here we can have at least some form ... of making money.

I taught Sunday School for two years. And I got fired. I abused my authority. I used to teach class like this, "OK, if one more person talks, everybody is going to Hell."

I think comedy is an angry art form; it's an outsider art form.

If we have the opportunity to be generous with our hearts, ourselves, we have no idea of the depth and breadth of love's reach.

[Smoking] was a comfort, an occupation, a drug, a casual habit, a distraction, a way to not eat, a way to not pay attention, a way to not feel.