Lily Collins Quotes

If you don't believe you don't belong.

I came here from Romania when I was 12 years old. I had an accent. High school was tough a little bit for a few years. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be good-looking. I wanted to be popular. I spent a lot of time thinking, 'What are these people going to think of me?'

I feel more at home knowing I'm not really at home. It takes all the pressure off you trying to fit in!

You've got to really be able to accept the rejection.

I don't want anyone to ever say that I don't belong where I am.

The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.

I took a lot of bad things after Athens. I just learnt to deal with it. The problem was beforehand I had this feeling where I was trying to please everybody - I wanted everybody to like me.

I don't think I ever felt an outsider when I had a stutter.

God, I mean I had so many people tell me, 'What you're doing doesn't work.' I used to have to get on stage and apologize for talking the way that I speak.

I'm basically a professional nerd, and I'm still not cool. I'm around people who are cool sometimes, and I know I'm not them. But that's OK; I don't care.

I feel the same way about Shondaland I feel about Africa and Greece. I feel pretty in both places. Men look at me like I'm a novelty, and women think I'm just cool. I feel absolutely at home immediately. I'm not altering myself to fit in. I'm walking in just as I am. And there are open arms stretched out to greet me.

You get into comedy because you are insecure, and you communicate with the world through comedy to sort of alleviate the tension of those insecurities and to find a way to make people like you other than the way you look or how good you are at sports. I don't think that really goes away.

At school, I felt out of place. I was bullied. I would think, 'These kids don't like me, they don't accept me,' but I felt like in the entertainment industry, I would fit in.

I've gotten used to being a foreigner.

As a child, it was really hard because I'd be thrown into a new school and have to make new friends, or I'd sit in class for months without speaking the language, but as I got older, I welcomed the possibility of discovering new cultures and languages.

Many times, people would react to the fact that I looked different, and I would think that there was something wrong with me - that maybe one of my shirt buttons was undone or something. It took 20 or 30 years to get used to it.

I've lived my whole life trying to prove that I'm worthy of being a part of something because I never really felt that.

It took me a long time to blossom. Everyone else understood how to socialize and how to look. I didn't get the memo.

For me, as an immigrant who didn't speak the language, when I would have struggles as a kid, my dad would say, 'Once you are able to communicate with people, they're able to connect with you beyond your otherness.' That is really the message I've carried throughout my life.

When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't.

Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody.

Kids made fun of me because I was dark skinned, had a wide nose, and was dyslexic. Even as an actor, it took me a long time to realize why words and letters got jumbled in my mind and came out differently.

When you are free from self-doubt, you fail better. You accept criticism and listen.

We are all freaks. Yes! Alone in our rooms at night, we are all weirdoes and outcasts and losers. That is what being a teenager is all about! Whether you admit it or not, you are all worried that the others won’t accept you, that if they knew the real you, they would recoil in horror. Each of us carries with us a secret shame that we think is somehow unique…And if we are, each of us, freaks – then can’t we accept what’s different in each other and move on?

I've been doubted all my life.