The Edge Quotes

I was like this weird, edgy 10-year-old. I was figuring out who I was, obviously at the worst time. I had braces and bangs, and it was a nightmare.

Oakland Technical High School. Like any high-school experience, it was ambiguous. I was shy with girls; I had friends, but there were times I didn't feel I had the right friends. My grades were only so-so.

I went through my awkward teenage years. I don't want to go back.

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.

Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers?

We moved in 8th grade, so 7th grade I was doing okay, and then 8th grade, everything fell apart. I had no fashion sense to speak of. We only had a couple of hair care products back then. We didn't have all these things to tame your hair. I had glasses; I had braces. I had it all.

My hair was always frizzy. I always wanted to be blonde with lovely straight hair. I was very skinny. I was quite tomboyish, just very quiet. I always wanted to fit in; I just couldn't.

Most normal boys, as they're growing up, they - in order to become attractive, they might, you know, get good at sports or join a rock band or develop good social skills, and for some reason, I thought that drawing comic books might be my route.

I did get bullied and I did get picked on and I did have that feeling in my gut of being incredibly self-conscious. I naturally gravitated towards my elders because I didn't know how to speak or be present with my peers.

I just wanted to fit in as a teenager, but it was hopeless.

As a teenager at high school, I felt like an outsider.

I felt all the things that other teenagers felt. I was insecure in lots of ways, over-confident in others. I was very emotional. Excitable.

I remember feeling all right with myself until age 13. Then, I was getting off the bus one day and this guy called me Miss Piggy. That was the first time I ever really felt like I wasn't okay.

I can easily connect with the prepubescent dork I spent much of my life being.

There was a point in school when I was, like, thirteen, that I didn't feel comfortable at all.

A large part of my adolescence was spent doing my very best to draw attention to myself.

Who has the best features? This was a little game, conducted several times and always with the same results, in seventh grade, the time when so many of life's little horrors begin.

Middle school was probably my hardest time. I was trying to fit in for so long, until about junior year of high school when I realized that trying to fit into this one image of perfection was never going to make me happy.

I think the hardest part about being a teenager is dealing with other teenagers - the criticism and the ridicule, the gossip and rumors.

When I was younger, the pressure was just being cool. I never thought of myself as a cool guy. I always thought of myself as more of the goofy guy.

I had a tough time fitting in, as I guess most kids do. I felt like school was kind of a grand opportunity to figure yourself out and to figure out what you wanted.

On some level, I think everyone felt like a dork in high school.

Everyone has strange teenage years. It's not like I can claim some particularly unique set of high school horrors. I think I was just an awkward kid who never felt comfortable in his own skin. I think I was alone a lot by circumstance and then by choice.

I must have been a very strange child. I was very pretentious. Like Adrian Mole.

You go through those awkward, dorky, geeky stages, and growing up in the industry amplifies all that. Fortunately, I have a mother who encouraged me to build my confidence from within and embrace my imperfections.