Perfume Genius Quotes

I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit. I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up.

I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shop windows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.

I was wracked with insecurity.

I'm very insecure.

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'm very uncomfortable in my own skin.

I don't like the sound of my voice.

Being a kid, as all kids do, you feel out of place or like kind of a freak. You wake up feeling like your head got put onto someone else's body that day.

Where I fit in is confusing to me.

I feel uncomfortable because I'm insecure about who I am.

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?

I have never felt out of place in my entire life. But I did at Yale.

I'm deeply insecure. I ask my wife all the time, 'Was that OK? Are people lying?' I'm not as happily oblivious as I'd like.

Most of the time, I'm a little bewildered or sort of feel out of place.

I never felt comfortable in my own skin, and I feel like I missed out on a lot of high school experiences because I was so worried about where I fit in because I was so confused.

Emotionally, I feel mostly out-of-depth, like I will never quite learn how to be what I should be. And that makes me feel pretty vulnerable a lot of the time.

It's as if I've inherited a skin I cannot quite fit, and so I walk about constantly pulling and and tugging, pinning and pruning, trying desperately to fill it out, hoping that no one will look at me struggling and say, 'That one there- she's a fraud, Look how she doesn't fit at all.

It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying "Come up again, dear!" I shall only look up and say "Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else"--but, oh dear!' cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, 'I do wish they WOULD put their heads down! I am so VERY tired of being all alone here!

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.

Yes, and I had pimples so badly it used to make me so shy. I used not to look at myself. I'd hide my face in the dark, I wouldn't want to look in the mirror and my father teased me and I just hated it and I cried everyday.

I was very lost as a teenager. Which is a horrible way to feel.

At school I pretended I had a normal life, but I felt lonely all the time and different from everyone else. I never felt like I fit in, and I wasn't allowed to participate in after-school activities, go to sports events or parties or date boys. Many times I had to make up stories about why I couldn't do anything with my classmates.

I grew up doubting myself. It was a very spotty, frustrating, worrying time.

When people are struggling, that's a painful place to be in, to not know who you are and where you belong and what you desire.

I longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect.