AJ Tracey Quotes

No matter what you eventually become - free, empowered - the lingering feeling of 'once an outsider, always an outsider' is very vivid for me.

I never expected to run into a room and suddenly I belonged. I figured people who live on the fringes of society, they're more free. They can choose to visit anywhere; they don't belong to anywhere. It's like being without a nation, in a way.

I think if you are an outsider then you are an outsider always.

When we talk about communities, we seldom discuss the margins. But for every person nestled comfortably in the bosom of a community, there is someone else on the outskirts, feeling ambivalent. Ambiguous. Excluded. Unwilling or unable to come more fully into the fold.

I think you only really feel like an outsider if you've been an insider.

Indie world won't have me, and mainstream world treats me like an alien, but here I am still floating between these two worlds.

I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.

If you're doing something outside of dominant culture, there's not an easy place for you. You will have to do it yourself.

I was kind of the black sheep with the Disney kids. I was uninterested in making friends with most of them. I didn't really fall into 'the Disney mold.' I was more or less the kid hanging out with the crew members and got along with them far better.

I allegedly am an outsider writer, so I write from the perspective of somebody who doesn't completely fit in. But at the same time, I can state the fact that I don't know of any good writer who is not an outsider writer.

I am sure it must be true that people opt out of the mainstream society because they feel that there are going to be no rewards for them, if they stay.

I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.

If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.

When you're not part of a club, you have to find another way of surviving.

If you don't belong somewhere, that outsider status you have gives you perspective. Of course, another word for outsider is 'exile,' and that's not fun at all.

I do feel like I'm not entirely an insider.

I've been trying to cram myself down the throats of America for a longer time than I care to remember.

Increasingly I feel like a Jew, an immigrant, a Russian - anything but a normal, mainstream American.

I feel as though there's a lot invested in my background in being an outsider.

Where do I fit in? That's something I think about as an actor, especially as an actor from a minority community.

I am not an insider - definitely not... but I don't think you could call me an outsider.

There is a line from the Marina Tsvetaeva poem I'm so fond of: "In this most Christian of worlds/ All poets are Jews." What she means is that writers and artists are outside the normal flow of daily life, the normal flow of society in general.

When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you’re not in it, there’s a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.

I'm interested in people who are not exactly the middle way, or who are trying something else because they cannot prevent themselves from being different, or they wish to be different, or they are different because society pushed them away.

I've always felt like my nose is pressed to glass. I always feel a little bit like an outsider.