Novala Takemoto Quotes

I was ostracized by my community.

Ostracism means you don't exist at all. And that's a very difficult situation to live with. As gay people, we had been chasing ostracism by that point for probably 300 years. You just knew that you should have dropped into your black hole.

I don't consider myself a pariah.

Even at church, people would not shake my hand.

People would get up and leave so they would not have to sit anywhere near me.

I was more or less a carnival attraction. I was a freak show.

I was taunted because I was different.

I was an outsider. I looked different, and I felt really voiceless as a kid.

At that moment in time when we feel like the other, we were not the person embraced, not one of the cool kids, not in the club - when you're that person, it makes you feel smaller, and when they persecute you as a result, that's a difficult position to be in.

When you walk into a room, and you're the only one of something - the only woman or the only African American - that immediate feeling of loneliness happens.

Because no one thought she was a person, she had no one to really talk to.

One day you're racing about the business of life, harried but vital, a part of its machinery. Then gradually but inexorably you are left out, until one day you find the machinery tearing along without you - and nobody even notices.

At North Hollywood High School, I was shunned by everyone. I would sit down in the cafeteria, and students would get up from the table and walk away. They thought I was from the Mafia.

I'm an outsider.

I feel like an outsider, and I always will feel like one. I've always felt that I wasn't a member of any particular group.

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.

Never, ever, have I felt really accepted in Hollywood.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

If you want to punish somebody, never talking to them again is a really good method.

I do feel like an outsider, but I don't lose any sleep over it.

I write about outsiders. I write about people who are outside and don't know quite how to get in because it's how I've always felt.

It's a clique that I've never been a part of. It's not like I identify them in a negative way.

Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks- and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves.

I can't go back and label myself as an outcast because I was a pretty well-adjusted kid, but I can certainly relate to the feeling of being an outsider.

I have spent a lot of years on the outside looking in.