Wendelin Van Draanen Quotes

I remember the general anxiety of teenager, and I remember establishing some sort of appearance based on what my peers would think. And cliques, oh my God, the worst. The worst!

I was very average in the social label scale going through school. I was neither the coolest person in school, nor did I suffer the slings and arrows of being made fun of to such a degree that I couldn't get through the day.

My biggest problem in middle school was catty girls, cliques, and trying to figure out if I wanted to be a part of one of those, just figuring out who I was and all that.

Popularity is given to you, and if you think that just because you're really popular you're a better person, it could be a real crash when you find the popularity goes down.

I always say it doesn't matter what age you are: everything is like high school.

In secondary school, I became aware of the idea of being cool, and that was a bit of a shell shock.

I wasn't the cool kid in school, but I wasn't the lame one. I knew I wasn't cool, so I called myself lame, and that's what made me cool in front of the cool kids.

I don't understand how people can stand next to you one year,and next year, they cannot. They're going crazy, screaming. They can't take it that you're there. But last year I was in the same club,walking around,lonely like a motherfucker. Couldn't get a date or a dance. I was too skinny, too something, and now, "He's just adorable. He's just, oh!

Fun. I'm not the kind of guy kids picked on in school, but I've seen it happen. I've never really given much thought to being cool. I don't really think about it one way or the other.

I hated school . . . I freaking hated it. The fact is that it revolved around something you didn't have access to. If you weren't on the football team, if you were in the band, you were a leper. When people say those were the best years of our lives, I want to scream.

I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular.

I don't know if I was popular in high school. My school was actually not really clique-y, which was nice. I went to a very artsy school, so everyone was kind of friends with each other. I was trying to be popular more, like, in junior high and elementary school and dealt with all that backstabbing and drama.

Don't give in to all the cliques and popularity. It means nothing. I know super popular guys, and guess what? They're just normal people, too.

Class clowns are never allowed to date anybody decent, but you don't get beaten up, you're invited to parties, and everybody likes you.

Who has the best features? This was a little game, conducted several times and always with the same results, in seventh grade, the time when so many of life's little horrors begin.

I could never dream of being cool.

I was not the hot, popular girl in school.

What's funny is that the idea of popularity - even the use of the word 'popular' - is something that had been mostly absent from my life since junior high. In fact, the hallmark of life after junior high seemed to be the shedding of popularity as a central concern.

I was not a jock in high school. I know, you're shocked.

I'm not trying to become popular.

In high school, it was all about popularity, being with the boyfriend and all the girls thinking he's cute.

As teenagers, we all see ourselves as outsiders... and it's very easy to look at other people who are more popular, who have more pocket money, and it makes you feel even more like an outsider, and it does shape who you become as a person.

My first three years of high school, I wasn't that cool.

I was the hallway clown in high school.

I think if I was 5-foot-3, I would have been really popular and dated a lot more in high school. I didn't develop like the pretty girl.