Margaret Cho

It is tragic that people who are incarcerated are unable to vote. They are probably the most important voices to listen to because they can tell us what we need to change.

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.

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.

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 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?

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

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.

I didn't appreciate the young woman that I was, or my young beauty, because I was so obsessed with the fact that I felt fat. It's never good to add to anybody else's suffering. It's an important topic to really get the gravity and the importance of - dealing with dignity.

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.

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

It's very hard for a woman in comedy. It's hard for women to be bold and not care what anyone, particularly men, think. Maybe that is why so many women comics are lesbians.

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.

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.'