Sara Shepard Quotes

I was considered chubby as a teen.

Anyone who's been a teenager, or raised one, knows growing up is hard. Kids can be cruel to their peers, and many young people go through tough times and experience low moments.

Being a teenager and figuring out who you are is hard enough without someone attacking you.

When I was a teenager, I was fat. I was shy. I wore glasses. I had a big eyebrow and hair all over my body. They were years of torture.

When I was growing up, particularly during puberty in my teen years, I was so miserable because I elicited so much teasing and meanness from my teenage cohorts.

I absolutely hated high school. As a freshman, I was 5 feet tall and weighed 95 pounds... When I got to high school, I had no social skills. Was I a nerd? More of a dork. Definitely not one of the popular kids.

I think high school's very difficult. You're figuring out your own power and your effect on other people. You look back and see how you spent so much energy on figuring out things with your parents or your peers.

When I was a teenager, I was super-awkward. I don't think I really felt comfortable in my body or with how I looked, and people were nasty.

I had people body-shaming me when I gained a lot of weight and as a teenager, your body is going to change. To get through it, you need to have great family and friends.

The teen years are extremely serious and everything matters and every insult really hurts. I know there are cliques and bullying. And you don't yet ­understand that it will all go away.

I had a hard time in middle school. I was never really quite me until I was 16 or 17, and things like bullying didn't matter anymore.

I felt alienated at school, and I never did well with girls.

In high school, people wanted to find the worst in me.

It's definitely particular to each situation, but whether it is a long history or someone that you're intimidated by or someone that you didn't think you ever had a shot at, at the end of the day, I think we're all living through high school, every day.

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

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

Books for teens are amazing and compelling, I think, because they're generally set in a time in people's lives when they are uncertain about who they are and who they love and what the right thing is to do.

Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.

If I saw my 15-year-old self now, I'd think I wasn't that bad, but back then I perceived myself as awful.

Being a teen can be tough. Just try to surround yourself with really good friends that really have your back, and also be a really good friend to those who really care about you. If you're not sure about certain things, talk to your friends that you trust and your family.

I was very average in the social label scale going through school. I was neither the coolest person in school, nor did I suffer the slings and arrows of being made fun of to such a degree that I couldn't get through the day.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you're 16 can mirror the one you have when you're 26. Life repeats itself.

Self-reflection is so healthy. Journaling works for me - when I record the details of what I'm going through, whether it's a relationship issue or negative thoughts, I can look back and see how far I've come. It makes me proud to see my progress and how I got through a bad situation.

What interests me is what children go through while growing up.

High school is just horrible in general. So, I think it was a good time for me to have stopped acting. I got to be normal in high school.