Walter Dean Myers Quotes

I went to a private school, and I struggled academically. It was really disheartening to always be considered bad at that.

In elementary school, I did well in science, but I was a poor writer. When I got to high school, I failed all my courses.

I definitely have managed to overcome dyslexia now to become a fully functional human being but things were a lot more difficult when I was younger.

I found that I was just hopeless at school. It was just a total bore. First, I passed in art and English, and then just art. Then I passed out.

At 12 I dropped out of school but I had lost interest in it at a much earlier age. For me, school was very very stressful.

I was always behind in class. There was people in my class who was amazing at art, amazing at maths, amazing at English, but I wasn't clever with anything, even though I tried my hardest.

I failed eighth grade twice, and then they moved me up to ninth grade. Then I failed that and dropped out. My teacher would hand me a test, and I'd grade it myself with an F, then put my head down on the desk.

I skipped school starting in tenth grade. I started doing badly and failed every class but English, so they kicked me out of school. They gave up on me.

I dropped out or got kicked out of four high schools.

When I was in college, I didn't like physics a lot, and I really wasn't very good at physics. And there were a lot of people around me who were really good at physics: I mean, scary good at physics. And they weren't much help to me, because I would say, 'How do you do this?' They'd say, 'Well, the answer's obvious.'

I never read in school. I got really bad grades-D's and F's and C's in some classes, and A's and B's in other classes. In the second week of the 11th grade, I just quit. When I was in school, it was really difficult. Almost everything I learned, I had to learn by listening. My report cards always said that I was not living up to my potential.

What fascinated me most was Churchill as a young child. He had a kind of Dickensian childhood. The neglect. And he was a terrible student. His whole life is a study in trying to overcome your feelings of inadequacy.

I was a terrible student. For me, to take a book home was a trial.

I was allergic to school. I was completely befuddled by school. I was trying so hard, but I couldn't succeed. I took geometry for four years, the same course over and over again, and I did not graduate with my senior class. I finally passed geometry after doing summer school, and eventually, I graduated.

In my first few years of elementary school at the Edison School in Detroit, I did poorly. I remember worrying that I might fail the second grade and be held back.

What I remember most vividly was the sense of always being a little behind the other kids in class - that sense of I wasn't cut out for class or I wasn't cut out to read.

I did badly in high school. I don't know why, but I failed all my exams. Then I took them again.

When I was in grade school, my teachers decided I was just about the dumbest thing to come through the door in a long time. Whatever the lesson, whatever the subject, I would sit and listen to them with a lost, glassy-eyed expression on my face.

Back when I was in school, few people understood dyslexia and what to do for it. My teachers thought I was lazy and not very clever, and I got bored easily... thinking of all the things I could do once I left school. I couldn't always follow what was going on.

It's official: The biggest back-to-school bullies are anxiety, worry and fear.

I was paralyzed for so long by people's opinions. I would be devastated to the point where I didn't know if I could make it through the day.

I never thrived in high school.

At school, I had to work really hard to get a D in maths. And I wasn't slacking off; I actually did work quite hard.

I was a really good student, first, second grade, third grade, and then fourth grade a little bit. And then I don't know what happened. I became a very terrible student. I wish I took it more serious.

I was a very, very slow learner. I was good at nothing.