Kevin McHale Quotes

Life is very, very short, and you can choose to live it how you want. You can choose to dumb yourself down and not express yourself just so you can fit in, just so people won't dislike you.

The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it, is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve, It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them.

I am doing things that are true to me. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled.

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.

You get to an age where you get tired of hiding behind whatever people think is correct.

Everyone is being told by society to talk this way, to dress that way, to be this person or to be that person, and it's so important to just maintain a sense of self.

You don't have to be the cool party guy, getting everyone's attention.

A lot of Asian girls love being basic because it's safe. But the thing is, a lot of my fans are those girls, and they want to be bolder, but there's no one they could look up to and be like, 'It's OK to be that way.'

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

People sometimes are afraid to be who they are because of other people's ideals.

You don't realise how cool your culture is until you get out of that phase of trying to fit in.

Just because so many conforming kids wake up every morning asking, 'What is everybody else going to wear today?' doesn't mean that they don't wish it were different. Peer pressure is just that: pressure.

At every point I am besieged by people who would like me to conform to some social norm of whatever sort of social group they expect me to be a part of. I never have any identification with these social groups.

People are always going to identify with what it's like living in society and have people judge you in certain ways, and how you can be strong enough to be your own person and all those good things.

I'm like, 'Yeah, I could afford braces, but why should I change myself to be what everybody else wants me to be when I'm OK with who I am and I'm happy with who I am?'

I think a lot of young kids at school are very conscious of trying to keep credibility in case they kind of stand out in a crowd and get bullied by trying to stay cool and stuff. And my whole thing, all the way through school, was I was just a goof... I didn't care.

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

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

If you let society and your peers define who you are, you're the less for it.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

I don't want to live up to how people expect me to be.

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 remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It's just funny.

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

I don't ever want to be a person that I'm not. A lot of girls fall into the trap where they are trying to impress other people, and that's the time when they lose themselves.