Prodigy Quotes

School was a very cruel environment, and I was a loner. But I learnt to get hurt, and I learnt to cope with it.

Kids will pick up on weakness, and I was very shy growing up. I was skinny and flat-chested; I didn't have the latest clothes. For me, it was about being left out and not having any friends and being laughed at. I was very lonely, but that happens to so many people.

I was badly bullied when I was in the seventh grade - relentlessly, mercilessly - by a group of 12-year-old girls. And it left me with a determination that no matter what, I had to throw my shoulders back, stick out my chin, and project a sense that no one and nothing could hurt me. That turned out to be a life-changing mistake.

I was bullied a lot as a kid in school from kindergarten up to third grade. I know what it feels like to be left out and to want to be different - more so, to want to not be different and want to just fit in.

I was bullied as a boy - lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

I think Pete did have a hard time as a kid with his appearance. But don't all kids have a hard time? God, I had a hard time, too. I was little with bow legs and rickets. I used to get picked on like everybody used to get picked on.

No one wanted to be my friend because of my lunchbox - because I never shared my lunchbox. One day the principal walked in and said, 'No one is friends with Karan Johar; who will be his friend?' My CEO today put his hand up there and said, he will.

Growing up in the '80s in central New Jersey as a weird kid with a blue mohawk listening to the Sex Pistols and dressing really funky, I was bullied pretty badly. It was every single day in elementary school and kept going into middle school, too. I felt totally alone, without a single person there for me.

People would beat me up after school; they would throw names at me. Children are brutal... Being different when you're a child is always a challenge.

I was always very small, so growing up, I was always getting kicked around. It was something I kind of grew up with.

I discovered that I was 'different' in the third grade. As the new kid at school, I was trying hard to find my footing. I thought I had made friends with a couple of girls - until they stopped talking to me. When I confronted them, they said their mothers had warned them to stay away because they might catch my skin condition.

I was an outsider as a kid, and I grew up around a lot of violence.

You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it.

That's the thing about being a former fat camp champ: when asked if I'd change my past if I could, I always answer no. The pain of being an overweight kid, the humiliation, make you think twice before ever cutting anyone else down.

My childhood was extremely lonely. I was dyslexic and lots of kids make fun of me. That experience made me tough inside, because you learn to quietly accept ridicule.

Its unfortunate and I really wish I wouldn't have to say this, but I really like human beings who have suffered. They're kinder.

People are all vulnerable in so many different ways. We go into survival mode a lot of times.

He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.

I was totally picked on, but look at me now! I was definitely picked on by boys and girls. I was really lanky and skinny and the boys would say, 'Turn sideways and stick out your tongue, you look like a zipper.'

I don't worry about people misinterpreting my kindness for weakness.

While I wouldn't wish being teased on anyone, I think it eventually leads to a kind of solidarity in adult life. The few people I know who weren't picked on in school are people I find I can't relate to on much more than a surface level. There's a sensitivity that comes with feeling like an outsider at some point in your life.

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.

Everyone picked on me in school because I was in foster care.

I paid for my name a lot when I was growing up because other kids teased me.

You're not going to live your life unscathed.