John Green Quotes

Even though I was manically overachieving and involved in everything, I still never felt like I belonged. That's definitely affected my whole life and why I wanted to become an actor and tell people stories, because communication and feeling like you belong is such an integral part of our social fabric.

I am your homegirl, at the end of the day, but I also feel very... outside. So if you're finding solace in feeling outside with me, then we're good to go.

Being myself didn't work. Being someone else didn't work. Maybe I just wasn't meant to have friends.

Anybody who's gone through puberty has understood what it feels like to be an outcast and alone.

I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.

I'm always feeling like I don't belong, no matter where I am. So I'm just searching for a family nonstop, and sometimes I find it in the mosh pit, sometimes I find it when I'm doing some French TV show with the president's wife.

As someone who is displaced - I left London almost fifteen years ago to make Connecticut my home - I am drawn to stories about people who don't belong, whether physically or emotionally, and who find their families of choice in their friends.

For me, the teen years were all about searching for a place for myself, wondering why I seemed so different than everyone else, wondering especially why no one could look past the surface and figure out who I really was underneath.

All my friends were doing just dumb stuff that kids do, like making out with people at parties and starting to date... I didn't know any gay people growing up or any queer people growing up, and so I just really felt alone and kind of lost, and I just wasn't experiencing life.

I have to admit, I was a little bit of a misfit.

I used to not have any confidence when it came to my body - I developed very late in terms of being a girl!

I know what it's like to be young and to feel like you don't belong.

I definitely spent a lot of high school isolating myself because I didn't feel like I fit in. I learned how to be funny.

I know when I was growing up, I was always lost and just thought I was alone and that I needed to find where I belonged.

I don't want anyone to ever feel they are alone and no one likes them, or to feel as insecure as I did.

One as deformed and horrible as myself, could not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects... with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being.

Finally I want to say this: If you are a kid and you are out there and you are chubby and not so cute and nerdy and shy and invisible and in pain, whatever your race, whatever your gender, whatever your sexual orientation, I’m standing here to tell you: You are not alone. Your tribe of people, they are out there in the world. Waiting for you.

A part of adolescence is feelimg that there's no one else around who's enough like youself to understand you.

I'm a monster, you know. I'm one of the dangerous ones. No you aren't, he promised. Your one of us.

I wasn't the most popular girl in class, I had my friends, but I was comfortable with myself. There's always those most popular girls and I wasn't one of those.

I'm a stranger," pointed out Bod. "You're not," she said, definitely. "You're a little boy." And then she said, "And you're my friend. So you can't be a stranger.

We are all freaks. Yes! Alone in our rooms at night, we are all weirdoes and outcasts and losers. That is what being a teenager is all about! Whether you admit it or not, you are all worried that the others won’t accept you, that if they knew the real you, they would recoil in horror. Each of us carries with us a secret shame that we think is somehow unique…And if we are, each of us, freaks – then can’t we accept what’s different in each other and move on?

"You look different now. Like a proper little girl," (said Gendry.) "I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns," (said Arya.) "Nice, though. A nice oak tree. [...] You even smell nice for a change."

There was Layla in the fullness of her lips, Lulu in the thick waves of her hair, Lu Xin in the intensity of her hazel eyes, Lucia in their twinkle. She was not alone. Maybe she never would be alone again. There, in the mirror, was every incarnation of Lucinda staring back at her and wondering, "What is to become of us? What about our history, and our love?

Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.