Margaret Cho Quotes

For my group of friends is Lady Gaga eye-opening? No. She's a less dangerous version of what was so cool about pop culture in the '80s. Back then it was so gay and so punk in so many ways.

While my friends were busy listening to the Talking Heads, Police, and B-52s, I was busy teaching myself to program on the Atari.

The whole format of entertainment that I did seems to be fading away. The music business of today is completely different when you see the videos and the music.

I was a Talking Heads fan from the very beginning.

I was a teenager in the '80s, and I was always a bit dismissive of Houston, as I think a lot of people who considered themselves 'cool music fans' were. She was poppy, bubble gum, making music not considered very cool. But you can't help but dance to some of those songs or feel emotionally affected by 'I Will Always Love You.'

In the 80s, I remember the radio stations would play everything from rock to rap.

I used to love Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, and the Human League.

This was an era where I was going out every night seeing Sparks, Berlin, Duran Duran, and Split Enz. Amazing acts doing really weird stuff, and I was very open to music and letting it transform me.

I guess personally I really like "Take on Me" by Aha. I think it just defines the 80s and how insane it was and like neon and like calculator watches and that whole thing.

There were a lot of things I listened to, but so-called pop music never killed me, you know, the type of stuff that always seems to make it on the radio. The whole radio thing seems so... it's like they've accepted the whole "new wave" thing only because this kind of pop element came into it. In Europe they really love emotion, but here it's like, "let's stay away from it because we might cry or something".

I still feel needles in my back when I think about all the horrible disasters that would have befallen me if I had permanently moved to San Francisco and rented a big house, joined the company dole, become national-affairs editor for some upstart magazine—that was the plan around 1967. But that would have meant going to work on a regular basis, like nine to five, with an office—I had to pull out.

At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.

I LOVE Taylor Swift's 1989. I think it's really cool at the moment that the production on her record is just as strong as the writing. I like the fact that the early nineties sound seems to have come back around

I was thinking the other day that there will never be another form of music that everybody has to respond to - like disco.

Labels want to capture a certain market of kids and blah blah blah, and it's true, I just never think about that stuff. It's all part of a chain that's moving along, but this phase of music has to switch.

Libya faces along to the Mediterranean and had been effectively the cork in the bottle of Africa. So all problems, economic problems and civil war in Africa - previously people fleeing those problems didn't end up in Europe because Libya policed the Mediterranean. That was said explicitly at the time, back in early 2011 by [Muammar] Gaddafi: 'What do these Europeans think they're doing, trying to bomb and destroy the Libyan State? There's going to be floods of migrants out of Africa and jihadists into Europe, and this is exactly what happened.

What I am proposing is to start a new chapter in Europe. To begin this adventure anew, and differently, if you'd like. The institutions as such aren't particularly important to me - and I think most people feel the same.

In Europe, it's more common to hear aggressive dance tracks on the radio.

What's bad for the culture is wack rappers that get held in high regard like they're some great thing because it's the flavor of the month, but everybody knows they can't rap. I don't think it's hard, even for somebody who's not hip-hop, to know that that's not good. When you put them up against somebody that can really rhyme, you go, "Okay, I get it. This is what it should sound like."

In Western Europe, Turkey is regarded as uncivilized, so they can't come in into the European Union until they're civilized. I think it's the other way around. If you could achieve the level of civilization of, say, Turkish intelectuals, it would be quite an achievement.

I'm not pro-war. But I think war has been the dominant condition of humankind, and peace has been the anomaly - certainly sustained periods of peace that profit great masses of people - and I think war has worked, even awful hellish wars: worked to staunch fascist aggression in Europe, worked to preserve the Union after secession in the United States, etc. Not always, maybe not often, but to say never is to reject history in favor of a wishful unreality.

... And if Europe gives Arabia a railway, Arabia gives Europe an idea - which I think balances the account.

Well, I think here there is some money gathered, especially in Europe, through the web, through connection to a network. I mean, imagine that in Brussels there is only one person, one single person, which is monitoring the traffic that goes on on the internet for the jihadist groups. In Strasbourg there are two people. So I mean you can imagine how easy it is to raise money through the net.

I think I'm one of few American designers doing a house in Europe, and I think I've been proving myself there very well.

I think we can leave mullets back in the '80's. Don't you? I'm really not a big fan of them. I did like the permed hair that I had in it. That was great, and I think that we should always have '80's music, forever and ever and ever. I'm a big fan.