Kami Garcia Quotes

It wasn't about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn't about what she said in class--usually something no one else would've thought of, and if they had, something they wouldn't have dared to say. It wasn't that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious. It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn't.

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

I can't stand outside myself and be anybody else.

It's lame to say that I'm a normal girl, but I think I am.

Popular kids don't necessarily know who they are because they're so busy trying to conform. It's the outcasts who are more attuned to who they are. They're more self-aware, more real.

I am a very honest person, and I can only say there are moments in my life where I really did think I was being me in the sense of my morals and beliefs and the way I acted. But when I look back at certain things that I wore and my hair and make-up, I was like, 'Whoa! That wasn't me!' But I didn't know it back then.

And I know when I was younger, and still, I always marvel at what I feel is different from what I'm told that I'm supposed to feel.

I've never been more normal than I am now.

I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.

Well, sometimes when you say you want to be like everybody else, you're really saying that you're not.

Everyone kept telling me, Just be yourself. Be yourself. I kept thinking, there's got to be more to it than that!

I always knew who I was, but everyone else wanted to me to be their 'idea' of the 'right' artist. At times, I even believed them.

I think temptation is ever present to become something that you think is more socially acceptable.

I don't even know who I am. All I know is that I am the sibling, daughter, sister, the friend of somebody, and I need to know who I am outside of that.

As you get older, you realize you're not that cool. You also realize the people you called posers are just people like you.

I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.

Who Am I? Or (Perhaps More Accurately) Who Else Could Be Me?

I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending to have a personality. I can't help it, it's what I've always done: The way some women change fashion regularly, I change personalities. What persona feels good, what's coveted, what's au courant? I think most people do this, they just don't admit it, or else they settle on one persona because they are too lazy or stupid to pull a switch.

I'm a jerk, that's who I am. I'm like everybody else.

It was then that I realized that while playing the well-meaning tolerant individual (in short: liberal) garnered you fans and grades, it didn't matter. In my heart and head, I was a fraud.

Everyone is the other and no one is himself.

It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.

As a consumer of entertainment, as a director, I'm always interested in questions of identity and who someone is and how they're perceived and who they are versus who they thought they'd be.

You are what you are. It is my opinion that trouble in the world comes from people who do not know what they are, and pretend to be something they're not.

I don't know whether I am different from other people. Perhaps I am. Perhaps no one has a personality, and people are inventing themselves in the context in which they find themselves.