Margaret Cho Quotes

I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor.

Rape is the most humiliating thing that can be done to you; it's the most vulnerable that you can be. But once I realized that, I became a stronger person and faced all my fears.

That happened to me, but I'm so much more than that girl that was kidnapped.

I can say I have forgiven my captors. That being said, I never want to see them again. I'm not OK with they did to me.

I don't have shame around where I've been or what I've done to survive to get to where I'm at in my life. When you don't have shame around something, it can't hurt you.

We had to forgive to survive the labyrinth

My problem was that I felt ashamed of feeling sad or angry. Now, I don't hide my vulnerability in my lyrics. There's no way I was going to get raped and not get something out of it. I learned about power and hope and forgiveness. I like who I am now and I wouldn't be who I am if that hadn't happened.

For many years, I shut down that place inside myself that needed to rage, cry, ask questions and basically just express herself. I made a conscious choice when I put (the song) 'Me and a Gun' on the record not to stay a victim anymore.

Forgiveness is something that we are often asked to grant and very few of us ever have the roadmap of how to get from the pain that we have experienced to being able to forgive someone.

I can forgive, I just can't forget.

If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them.

I'm not going to waste my energy looking into the eyes of someone like the guy who blew my legs off trying to find a way to forgive him for doing something that horrible when there are way more productive ways I could be spending my life. You've got to focus on moving on.

Anger is the right response to something that is so wrong. But don't let the anger and pain and loss you feel prevent you from forgiving him and removing your hands from around his neck.

I don't get tired, because every time a woman doesn't die or doesn't get beaten or doesn't get raped or doesn't get honor-killed or doesn't get acid-burned, it's a huge victory.

A life lived without forgiveness is a prison.

She's been conned, ruined, left for dead, and she's not going to forgive any of it. She will soldier on, if only out of spite.

I have discovered that most people who tell me that they cannot forgive a person who wronged them are handicapped by a mistaken understanding of what forgiving is.

It is you who are choosing, in any moment, to be happy or choosing to be sad, or choosing to be angry, or forgiving, or enlightened, or whatever. You are choosing.

I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.

Forgiveness saves the expense of anger.

When you choose not to forgive, the experience that you do not forgive sticks with you.

From my experience, forgiving is the only way to survive.

Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.

Vengeance is having a videotape planted in your soul that cannot be turned off. It plays the painful scene over and over again inside your mind...And each time it plays you feel the clap of pain again...Forgiving turns off the videotape of pained memory Forgiving sets you free.

We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.