Shannon Purser Quotes

I started Pilates. I'm the only guy in there. They plot before I get there: 'How can we make John look ridiculous?' Because every exercise involved my legs up, like I'm in the stirrups or something.

I was invited to a dinner party by an ex, and I was convinced that he wanted to rekindle our relationship. I prohibited my friends from coming with me because I didn't want to make it awkward for them when he professed his love to me.

I remember actually liking a girl in high school who was kind of an outcast and weird, and people made fun of her. I remember hanging out with her, but I was apprehensive about telling anyone I really liked her.

No matter how much you urge them to relax and how much you mean it, your child probably grapples with highly stressful environments away from home, whether it's where they go to school, the teams they play on, or the peers in their social circle. Most teenagers I know long for empathy from their parents about their struggle.

The only time I only really made out with a girl in high school, my mom caught me.

Football doesn't bother me. I just enjoy it. It's when you have to go to clubs and sing and do initiations and all that stuff. That's when I get nervous.

Like any other kid, I was trying so hard to fit in that school made no sense to me. I wasn't attending class; I was trying to hang out in the caf with the cool kids. I was always trying to be cool.

You show up at high school, there's all these kids you don't know, and you're terrified that people will have some kind of wrong or unpleasant impression of you. You just don't want anything to ruin your public persona, because you actually have a public persona in high school.

It definitely wasn't cool in junior high, when everyone else is trying out for cheerleading, to have a life consumed by ballet.

I can be very social, but often, it weighs down on me later that the social thing was a put-on. I feel like my way of dealing with not wanting to go out is, I just don't. I can't bring myself to.

I used to care a lot about what other people thought - like teammates.

Growing up, I was the awkward, chubby kid. I had a few close friends, but I was the first one to be bullied.

I was in love with a girl in my class when I was in primary school, and she obviously thought I was a freak, so that wasn't working out. And the the guys in my class, every two weeks they'd say, 'Hey, we spoke to her, and she really likes you now. You should go and ask her again.' And then I'd go and ask her again.

I know intimately the struggle of trying to live your life and be yourself while feeling the pressure of an entire community on your shoulders.

Kids feel like they have to puff up or shrink. These reclusive qualities begin to develop because you feel that who you are is going to either be accepted or rejected by your family and friends.

I'd never dance at school discos, I couldn't believe people could show themselves like that.

Nothing sounds worse than having to be surrounded by people you don't like in a sequined dress.

There was a girl in fifth grade that I had a crush on that joined drama club, so I joined the drama club because I'm not an idiot, and I was gonna hang with her.

As teenagers, we go through social, emotional and physical changes... and sometimes, to feel comfortable, we end up doing things that are not true to who we are just to fit in and feel loved.

In secondary school, I became aware of the idea of being cool, and that was a bit of a shell shock.

Networks are operating from a fear base where it's all about playing the popularity game.

I think anyone who has been bullied finds it life-affirming if you live to tell the tale. I just wish someone told me at school that there's this weird average whereby if you're not popular at school you will become popular later.

I think the debating thing actually helped to establish to me that being popular was completely worthless. I didn't enjoy the social dynamic and immediately left after becoming number one. But it felt like I needed to do it to know what it was like. It wasn't just that I was an aggressive person, although that probably is true to an extent.

Being part of a crowd and not standing out is way more frightening than being the person that stands out.

I've always hated the feeling of trying to be cool or trying to fit in.