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.
Margaret ChoRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the feeling of being an outsider or foreigner in different cultures due to one's heritage.
Margaret Cho expresses the paradox of identity where, despite belonging to two cultures—American and Korean—she feels like a foreigner in both. This highlights the complexities of cultural identity and the challenges faced by those who straddle multiple worlds, feeling a sense of alienation in both.
Themes
IdentityForeignerCultureHeritageBelonging
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about multiculturalism and the challenges of cultural identity.
More from Margaret Cho
All quotes →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.
Margaret ChoRead
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.
Margaret ChoRead
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?
Margaret ChoRead
I was like, Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized...I'm just slutty. Where's my parade?
Margaret ChoRead
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.
Margaret ChoRead
Similar quotes
I think I'm ridiculously fortunate. I consider myself a Nigerian - that's home; my sensibility is Nigerian. But I like America, and I like that I can spend time in America.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.
Lena HorneRead
The mark of a Scot of all classes [is that] he ... remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
To me, you have to declare yourself a Chicano in order to be a Chicano. That makes a Chicano a Mexican-American with a defiant political attitude that centers on his or her right to self-definition. I'm a Chicano because I say I am.
Cheech MarinRead
I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.
Kara WalkerRead
I've always known exactly who I am. I was a girl trapped in a boy's body.
Jazz JenningsRead