Ernest Cline Quotes

I think every teenager feels like a Martian in something, whether it's in their family, I think, or in their school. I think every teenager, every human being has a sense that they don't belong somewhere.

I felt like, 'How do I fit in?' But then I never fit in. The whole time, I've never fit in.

I write about outsiders. I write about people who are outside and don't know quite how to get in because it's how I've always felt.

In talking, shyness and timidity distort the very meaning of my words. I don't pretend to know anybody well. People are like shadows to me and I am like a shadow.

I've never really fit in.

In my early years, I couldn't find a community. I couldn't find anybody like me. I felt so isolated. There was nothing but shame and loneliness.

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

I never felt like I belong to anything - to any groups of friends. I never really had that.

Everybody feels like an outsider at some point in their lives.

Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.

She didn't want to have anything to do with the party. She was tired of feeling like she didn't fit in, but she didn't want to go home, either, because she was a tired of being lonely and she was a little drunk.

I think everybody gets lonely sometimes. I don't know if people can ever understand how you can be in a room full of people and be lonely sometimes.

I think everyone can feel like an outsider. I know I have. I've always felt like one.

The feeling of not belonging, of not being entirely worthy, of being sometimes hostage to your own sensibilities. Those things speak to me very personally.

Let's face it. No kid in high school feels as though they fit in.

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

I don't have any social life or anything.

You're standing onstage in a sold-out arena with people singing your music, and you feel like the loneliest person in the world. Because here's a party that, essentially, it's for you. And you still somehow feel like you don't belong there. Those people all have their lives and go back home.

I've always felt myself to be an outsider. I've always felt awkward.

I never really had any close friends in India, and I felt a terrible loneliness and isolation for many years. Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits.

When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be even lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anybody or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.

Selfishness, narcissism, being uncomfortable in your own skin, not feeling connected to the world around you, feeling dislocated from family and youth, having a strange relationship with your childhood - all those things feel really true to me.

I sometimes found myself more comfortable around my TV family than I did with my own parents and sister.

I hate family pressures and family responsibilities. I'm more comfortable as a stranger. I always imagined I could just live in a hotel. I'm afraid of family.

I've never really fit in anywhere.