Courtney A. Kemp Quotes

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

I want young people to know that they can belong - whatever your culture, your religion, your sexuality - that you can live life how you want to live it and feel comfortable how you are.

When I was a kid... I needed to belong.

Socially I never was an outsider. I have never thought of the conflict element before frankly, but perhaps it was wanting to belong, and at the same time wanting to retain one's own personality.

The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.

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.

I think we all want to fit in at a young age.

Everybody is different; as long as you look like you belong and you can fit in, the world is you oyster now.

I was an athlete, so I hung out with the jocks. I was smart, so I hung out with the nerdy kids. I was also into theater, so I hung out with the misfits... So I was always in different groups, and those groups never quite overlapped. The racial part of it was just another one of those groups, in one sense.

I was a geek who thought I was cool. I didn't hang out with a particular clique, but with different people from different cliques. I was a total nerd, trying to fit in. Luckily, I found music and that was my niche. That sorta took me out of my geekdom. I was never invited to parties as a teenager - I turned up with the popular people. That's where the lyrics to 'Guilty By Association' came from.

I want to do well and I want to fit in.

Even though I was manically overachieving and involved in everything, I still never felt like I belonged. That's definitely affected my whole life and why I wanted to become an actor and tell people stories, because communication and feeling like you belong is such an integral part of our social fabric.

Junior high is so much worse than high school because at least in high school different is more accepted, celebrated actually: all the girls with blue hair and gothic Hello Kitty backpacks.

When who you are naturally is not only considered a sin, but you're reviled for being that human being and you don't have any control over it, there are lots of issues that come into play. And it takes a lot of presence, determination, courage and space to figure out how to land in that truth regardless of what anyone around you thinks about it.

I don't want to stay underground for just the cool people.

I'm a gay black guy. If I can't ask questions without caring what people think of me, who can?

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

After a show, I'll get the 16-year-old white kid whose lip is pierced, his head is shaved and his parents hate him, and the young gangster from the screwed-up 'hood, and they say that now they realize there's someone out there who thinks like they do.

Most of us don't want to be outsiders.

I've never felt as though I didn't belong, I just acted as though I did.

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've always felt a bit of an outsider. It used to worry me that, in terms of TV, I did not look like 'the girlfriend' or 'the daughter'. That pushed me to write my own stuff, as I thought no one else was going to write me a lead in the sitcom.

For me, the teen years were all about searching for a place for myself, wondering why I seemed so different than everyone else, wondering especially why no one could look past the surface and figure out who I really was underneath.

I feel at home in Shondaland. I feel a lot of things at Shondaland, but one of the things I feel that I haven't felt before is at home. I feel accepted for who I am and acknowledged for who I am. I feel like my ideas are embraced.

In school, I really felt like I didn't fit a type. I think everybody had a hard time putting me in a category. They all sort of realized, 'Hmm, you don't really look like a soprano. You're not really a character belter.'