Roger Bannister Quotes

Adolescents are attracted to tragic heroes. That's why rock stars dress like homeless people. Adolescence is a fall. It's when every child becomes an orphan.

I had a tough time fitting in, as I guess most kids do. I felt like school was kind of a grand opportunity to figure yourself out and to figure out what you wanted.

The first album was a coming-of-age album - I don't like the phrase, but when you listen to it, you can tell I was having a hard time, that I wasn't socially relating to people.

If you're already somebody who's feeling different, you'll do everything in your power to fix it because children will do everything in their power to fit in and assimilate.

Like most people, I have painful memories of trying to fit in as a child. I wore, said, and did pretty much what everyone else did.

I'm glad I went through all the normal teenage dramas that a lot of people go through. I can really relate to 'Secret Life' because I witnessed those similar struggles.

We're all just trying to fit in and find ourselves, particularly when we're growing up.

To me, White Boy Shuffle is sort of like Catcher in the Rye, the story is so universal.

My identity was a big issue when I was a teenager, and I had a lot of questions, like: 'Who am I?' 'Who do I belong to?' But when I was still quite young, I decided that belonging is a tough process in life, and I'd better say I belonged to myself and the world rather than belonging to one nationality or another.

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.

Middle school was probably my hardest time. I was trying to fit in for so long, until about junior year of high school when I realized that trying to fit into this one image of perfection was never going to make me happy.

I always tried so hard to fit in, and then I figured out that I didn't want to fit.

As a teenage girl myself, I've gone through times in my life where I've felt insecure about who I am and have tried so hard to fit in with everyone else.

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 was always a class clown, so I never had trouble fitting in; I just had trouble finding out where I really wanted to be.

When I was about 17 or 18, I finally admitted to myself that I wasn't going to change. I didn't know what the consequences would be, but I had the definite feeling that it was going to wreck my Disney career.

Like so many kids, I just wanted to fit in, and I see now that I spent most of my life trying to be what I wasn't, trying to get people to like me.

I never felt like someone who was boyish and coming to terms with asking girls out or anything like that, which was what 'The Big Steal' and 'Spotswood' were about. But I guess that's the impression I left on people.

Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers?

I remember the kind of teenager I was, the kind of teenager I wanted to be, and then the kind of teenagers that were all around me. Life is lived on such a big scale in those years - and such an embarrassing one as well.

I was one of those kids who kept trying on different skins in high school. I was very afraid to be myself around all of these kids, to really reveal any part of myself that was true, so I would try on different skins, try on different masks, hoping I'd hit on one that was cool or quirky or interesting enough that suddenly I would be OK.

Everything when you're a teenager is a projection. Or at least, for me, it was. 'Who am I gonna be?'

High school was a complicated, confusing time for me. I wasn't confident, didn't know who I was, and was hiding from myself a lot.

Middle school was my most awkward stage. I switched schools after the sixth grade after having gone to the same school for six years with the same group of 40 kids. It was a shock. I reinvented myself. I experimented with different styles, different groups of friends, and different types of music and not knowing how to be cool.

It wasn't a leap for me to go from not wanting to be in my body as a teenager, not wanting to be in my house, to thinking, 'What would happen if I had disappeared?' And then going from writing scenes of angry kids to thinking a little more about the parents and what their lives would be like.