Radio Personalities

"The idea that the Georgia voting law is voter oppression, you're saying black people can't figure out how to vote? It's insulting!"

"As long as, every night, a black child does less homework than a white child, and substantially less homework than an Asian-American child, we're always going to have this problem. Which means it comes back to the home."

"I got a phone call [after Obama got elected] from someone from the UK and they said 'President Barack Obama just got elected, the first African-American president. Yet you did not support him. Wasn't that a bit awkward?' And I said 'For him or for me?'"

"Race has never been less significant a factor in American success, but it has never been more significant a factor for the Democratic party's success."

"I heard her every day. She’s a marvelous entertainer. I’m surprised she didn’t get to Hollywood."

"We were trying to make the Americans understand that it was not right for them to be in Vietnam, that they were an aggressor, that this was a problem for the Vietnamese to sort out."

"My work was to make the G.I.s understand that it was not right for them to take part in this war. I talk to them about the traditions of the Vietnamese, to resist aggression. I want them to know the truth about this war and to do a little bit to demoralize them so that they will refuse to fight."

"Hannah comes on and she knows what guard unit was called in and what kind of weapons were used. That’s when it starts to hit home. We knew what kind of fire power and devastation that kind of weapon can do to people, and now those same weapons were turning on us, you know, our own military is killing our own people. We might as well have been Viet Cong. But Hannah picked up on it and talked about it."

"I always preferred American movies to French films. The French talked too much. There was more action in American movies."

"I wanted to join the Voice of Vietnam because it was a good opportunity to help my country. I was not political. I was patriotic."

"Hannah often stirred up arguments among the P.O.W.s. There were nearly fist fights over the programs. Some guys wanted to hear them, while others tried to ignore them. Personally, I listened because I usually gleaned information, reading between the lines."

"The signal was pretty good around Da Nang and we would tune in once or twice a week to hear her talk about the war, Hannah didn’t necessarily make sense; she used American English, but really didn’t speak our language in spite of hip expressions and hit tunes, even tunes banned on U.S. Army radio. The best thing going for her was that she was female and had a nice soft voice."

"Hanoi Hannah was clearly one of the most prominent broadcasters we had in the history of the Voice of Vietnam and the country in general. She will be remembered for her legendary voice in broadcasts targeting American servicemen. Her influence on Vietnam’s success against the US was huge."

"Let’s let bygones be bygones. Let’s move on and be friends. There will be many benefits if we can be friends together. There is no reason to be enemies."

"We mentioned that G.I.s should go AWOL and suggested some frigging, or that is fragging. We advised them to do what they think proper against the war."

"When the bombs came on Hanoi, I did feel angry. To the Vietnamese, Hanoi is a sacred ground. But even then, when I spoke to the G.I.s I tried always to be calm. I never felt aggression toward Americans as a people. I never called them the enemy, only adversaries."

"We bought the music from progressive Americans who came to visit Hanoi. We also have our own music, but I think that the G.I.s like to listen to American music, it's more suitable to their ears."

"She struck me mainly as an intellectual. Certainly didn't remind me of a strident propagandist at all."

"Now for our talk. A Vietnam black G.I. who refuses to be a victim of racism is Billy Smith. It seems on the morning of March 15th a fragmentation grenade went off in an officer’s barracks in Bien Hoa killing two gung-ho lieutenants. Smith was illegally searched, arrested and put in Long Binh jail and brought home for trial. The evidence that showed him guilty was this: being black, poor and against the war and refusing to be a victim of racism."

"American G.I.s don't fight this unjust immoral and illegal war of Johnson's. Get out of Vietnam now and alive. This is the voice of Vietnam Broadcasting from Hanoi, capitol of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Our program for American G.I.s can be heard at 16:30 hours. Now here's Connie Francis singing "I Almost Lost My Mind"."

"Our program served for a cause, so we believed in that cause. So we continued to broadcast."

"My goal was to tell G.I.s they shouldn’t participate in a war that wasn’t theirs. I tried to be friendly and convincing. I didn’t want to be shrill or aggressive. For instance, I referred to the Americans as the adversary. I never called them the enemy."

"I thought it was time for me to do something to contribute to the revolution."

"Defect, G.I. It is a very good idea to leave a sinking ship. You know you cannot win this war."

"How are you G.I. Joe? It seems to me that most of you are poorly informed about the going of the war, to say nothing about a correct explanation of your presence over here. Nothing is more confused than to be ordered into a war to die or to be maimed for life without the faintest idea of what’s going on."

"Isn't it clear that the war makers are gambling with your lives, while pocketing huge profits?"

"G.I., your government has abandoned you. They have ordered you to die. Don’t trust them. They lied to you, G.I.s, you know you cannot win this war."

"San Francisco has always been a dream. And the Golden Gate Bridge and Hollywood, I’d love to see them too."

"It may have brought positivity in terms of the effect on the economy, but for every boom there will be a bust. However, nobody expects the bust to happen. Before it does go bust though, another boom will come along. Booms are only good when you observe them from afar. You’ll only be hurt if you get caught in its midst."

"Rather than to make a living, hmmm. Whether I could become a voice actress or not, is was too uncertain, and I thought the possibility that I could become a voice actress was very small. I was familiar with the work of nurses from my childhood because of my family business, so I decided to become a nurse. But I happened to find a magazine Debut, and from that moment all of the things worked well and I thought perhaps I really could become a voice actress."

"Anime in the ‘90s was overflowing with ambition…Anime [today] which are trying to be similar to previous hits can never be better than the originals. Going forward, I want to be part of projects that aren’t trying to be ‘like’ something that came before."

"Eventually, the success of our job depends on fans' support, and I want them to take a long time before they evaluate our performances. I think fans will feel our enthusiasm and I want to live up to their expectations."

"As far as I'm concerned, I don't really care much about it. Then what's the best performance? I think I should just do 120% of what I can do now and I believe that what needs to be done will come when it needs to be done. In other words, I think, " Now, eight years later, there must be a point to doing this." In the first place, the work itself is like a twisted time and space, like there is no time at all. And since we are voice actors, we only need to use our mental faculties and a little bit of our physical voice. It's not good to be too proud, but I tried not to think about the eight years."

"Because of the fast pace of the industry, it’s common to fill voice actors’ schedules with as much work as possible, get them up on stage, and build up all the buzz you can. That’ll make you feel like you’re an absolutely essential individual, but in just three years all that could change. I don’t want companies to go chasing after small yet quick and easy profits, but they don’t really have any intention of developing voice actors long-term."

"Maybe I’m just dense, but I didn’t even realize that a boom was happening. I might have felt like it was a boom if it was as natural as how you’d see certain products every time you stopped by the convenience store – not seeing watermelons only in the summer, but something that would always be on the shelves throughout the seasons. Discounting the anime shops, you’d rarely get to see anime songs on display in HMV or Tower Records. It felt like [anime was] being given the cold shoulder. Anime songs are too much of a niche genre which means that the CDs are in the same way, only sold in niche retailers. People who liked me were embarrassed about it, telling me that “I can’t openly admit that I like you” – with that kind of situation, I couldn’t really feel that there was a boom at all."

"The first thing my mom taught me as a young girl was not to even wisper, because the birds and mice could hear me. [...] My mom said that 'The most powerful weapon you have in your body is your tounge. Watch out what you say!' Even subconsciously you know how not to think bad things about the regime."

"The UN is literally the most useless organization I have ever seen in my life. Literally."

"I want to say something to my fellow North Koreans who are living in that darkness. They might not believe this, but I want to tell them that an alternative life is possible. Be free. From my experience, literally anything is possible. I was bought, I was sold as a slave. But now I'm here, and that is why I believe in miracles. The one thing that I learned from history is that nothing is forever in this world. And that is why we have every reason to be hopeful."

"[About the United Nations:] In the name of diplomacy, they solve nothing and they keep legitimizing the Chinese government and North Korean regime, and they are part of it. Their vote means as much as [the American vote]. It shouldn't be that way. Their vote shouldn't mean nothing. [...] They are not normal regimes. They are like gangsters. They are Mafia. And the UN legitimize them. [...] They don't do anything. They do so much [more] harm than [they do] good in the world. I still don't know how more people are not realizing this."

"I'll tell you the truth, I've had bad days and good days in my life, but I've never had a day when I didn't enjoy that red light going on. Whether on the radio, or on television, there's still a little bump every time it goes on. And if you can spend a life, if you can get paid well for doing something you absolutely love, well you can't beat that."

"Lenny Bruce taught me that everything's funny. You can make everything funny. I don't think that assassinations are funny, I don't think you can make fun of ISIS, but almost everything is funny. And If we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? So I don't mind ethnic humor. I like ethnic humor. I like dialect jokes. Laughter is a very subjective thing. If it's funny to you it's funny. And a lot of things are funny to me. … Life is funny, sex is funny, marriage is funny, eating is funny, sports can be funny, everything is funny. Homes, horses, real estate. Everything is funny. People who are funny are funny. If you know you're funny you're funny."

"One of the most succinct commentaries I've come across for encouraging plain talk came from an executive who told his staff, "Don't utilize utilize. Use use." I try to avoid pompous language. Some people use it as an oral status symbol to impress others. Others use it because they've simply forgotten how to talk in simple, clear, everyday terms. You will be far better off, because you'll be better received and better understood, if you avoid "trendy talk.""

"I've never been drunk in my life. I've been high, but I've never been drunk. I think it's a fear of loss of control, but I never liked the taste of liquor."

"What you want in an interview is four things: You want someone who can explain what they do very well, who can have a sense of humor and hopefully is self-deprecating, who has a bit of a chip on their shoulder, and passion. If you have passion, a chip on the shoulder, a sense of humor, and you can explain what you do very well, it doesn't matter if you're a plumber or a singer or a politician. If you have those four things, you are interesting."

"The less I know, the better I feel about a person or book."

"You cannot talk to people successfully if they think you are not interested in what they have to say or you have no respect for them."

"In film and media I want to see short men with tall women."

"I would be spooning my 6'8" boyfriend. I'm the big spoon, obviously. He'll love that I said that."

"The thing that people have to realize is there's homeschooling and there's home education. Homeschooling is best described as doing homework with your child that he or she is assigned by a school teacher. Home education is parent-lead learning. The goal of a home educator is to instill and cultivate a love for learning that will last a lifetime."

"Our freedom is completely intertwined with our Christian faith. And so as we lose the faith in our culture, we lose our freedom because they don’t have the same value as they did, and so we will squander them because they’re completely intertwined, and it’s a very powerful thing. People who have no faith have no concept of what that is, so they’ll squander it freely."