Florence Griffith Joyner Quotes

I used to make fun of the kids in school who acted or went to dance class.

I think I hid my singing talent from a lot of my friends at school because I didn't want to alienate anyone. If everyone was singing along in the car to a Madonna song, I didn't join in because when we're younger we're afraid of sticking out or showing off, when in fact we should own those things that make us really unique.

I went to high school, and I started getting bullied because I was very weird. I mean, freshman year I went to school in a pirate suit - I just didn't care. I'm not like the cool girls - I'm the other girl. The one that's basically a nerd, but proud of that.

I was bullied every day at school because I carried a briefcase. I could have left it at home. But I thought it looked great! I didn't understand why anyone else didn't think so.

In school I was always the funny-looking, tall, skinny kid that got made fun of because of my weird teeth.

I grew up in Dallas, with cowboys. I was the only guy in sixth grade with long hair and an earring. Let's just say I got a lot of, er, flak for being different.

I wasn't interested in football. It made me different. I wore glasses, had bad hair, a funny name, you name it.

People thought I looked weird, that I talked weird.

I've never been pressed to be friends with everyone or be popular, even in school - I've always done my own thing.

I like to be around people that's not afraid to be different.

I hope I'm becoming more eccentric. More room in the brain.

I think that my father would find it so confusing that people want to imitate him. Not because he didn't have confidence in who he was, but because he never imitated anybody. He was his own person.

I don't mind not being cool.

Everybody struggles with being an oddball. It's tough trying to fit in when you're a kid; then you become an adult and you think, 'I'm just going to be myself and either they accept it or they don't.' But you know what? I like me, and that's the most important thing.

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

Growing up, I was picked on a bit; I was pretty heavy-set, and then I was a theater kid. I just felt unpopular and uncool, so I think in my mind I had this idea of fame and being popular and how nice that would be. The reality of it is sometimes it's not nice.

I love Lady Gaga. She's not afraid to take risks and be herself.

I think that all of us are 5-year-olds and we don't want to be embarrassed in the schoolyard.

When I first got into the league, I tried to fit in. Now I don't care.

I used to be more self-conscious about style because when you're younger, you want to exist, you want to show everything you do.

Now I'm old... maybe I'm still an eccentric hippie. There's a wonderful freedom in the eccentricity - you can go places, you can be wacky, and you don't have to be constrained. I think that's why people are eccentric - eccentricity is a weapon... and it's great!

I made sure that instead of people making fun of me, like every comedian probably says, I made fun of myself first so they would get distracted and just laugh. I was pretty brutally picked on for a while growing up. It was always the really pretty girls, the hot girls and then there was me. So I had to do something to get any sort of attention.

Where's your will to be weird?

Nowadays, everybody wanna be weird. We know how to manifest being weird.

Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.