Margaret Cho Quotes

The minute I stop singing, I'm back to being shy. I'm soft-spoken because I never really talked to people. I didn't learn to do it.

Take a microphone out of my hands, and I'm just plain folks.

I'm hideously shy as myself, but on stage I can run around naked and bite the heads off fish.

People still make me nervous, but gradually over the years I've developed kind of like a public personality, so I can talk. I have my spiel, I have my stories.

In high school, I was too shy to perform. It's one thing to get laughs from your family, to be funny at parties and in class. It's another thing to get up on the stage.

Some people are very good at that, communicating with the world; I'm not sure I'm suited to it.

I am, by nature, pretty reserved. It was after I became an actor that I started interacting more with people from different walks of life!

As a kid, I was really shy. Technically I am still, but when I'm performing I want everybody to listen.

Now I can walk into a room full of people I don't know and do my job. That's quite a massive thing to learn, I think.

I'm hopeless at small talk and have a problem making eye contact.

I don't think that just because you go on stage you are an exhibitionist.

I'm shy. I am. I mean, if I get around, you know, in a room of a bunch of people especially I - you know, I don't know or - it takes me a while to warm up. I'm - and the real me, I'm not as witty as, you know, as the comic Wanda. The comic, she's had time to work on some things.

When I came to New York, I was really awkward. I went to military academy for high school, so I didn't have the socialization that most kids do. When I got here, I was five years behind everybody. Talking to women was weird for me.

I'm actually pretty shy in real life. But I guess in front of the camera, I focus.

I like getting up in front of an audience. It's fun when you go to a baseball game and the crowd is cheering you. I can't deny it. And it's very funny, too. Sometimes you're shy; you go somewhere and everyone's looking at you, so you feel a little self-conscious.

I'm reasonably good at talking onstage, but actually holding court in a pub is all to do with power dynamics which I don't think has anything to do with fiction.

If you interview people or friends who work with me, they would say I'm private or internal or don't emote a lot. Yet I do it every day for 10 million people. I just don't do it for the 30 people I'm in the room with.

I'm just not one of those naturally funny, relaxed actors who enjoy the spotlight and are so good at it.

And I began to tell little anecdotes that had happened to me, and people would laugh. And I began to like that, you know. But I knew that, 'cause I'd do that in school, but I wouldn't do it out there in front of all them people.

I love being onstage and I love to perform. To be honest with you, I'm more comfortable performing than I am in an everyday situation, which I can't quite explain.

I wasn't really the most charming person, socially - it took me a long time to develop my people skills - but the one place I was always comfortable was onstage, acting or singing.

I'm certainly not your typical front-man material. Some people love being on stage and really open up, and I'm sort of the opposite of that. I don't crave the spotlight. I'm still not comfortable even talking on stage.

In real life, you just work for the ordinary self, but in the front of audience you become the superself. That's a completely different thing.

I think you've got to like people. There are MPs who are either painfully shy or who don't like public speaking or don't socialise very well, and you just think this must be the worst job in the world for them.

I'm quite shy. Television presents an amplified version of yourself. When I'm on camera I'm pumping more adrenaline, I'm being a bit more engaging than I am in everyday conversation, but that's normal, isn't it? Otherwise nobody would want to watch.