John Green Quotes

When I was younger, the pressure was just being cool. I never thought of myself as a cool guy. I always thought of myself as more of the goofy guy.

You don't want to be too cool. But you don't want to be too dorky. Still, I find it so much better to see a guy at a club being a dork, and having fun, than trying to be sexy.

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

I really never want to try to be cool.

I've always hated the feeling of trying to be cool or trying to fit in.

I was never considered cool throughout my teens: a very important time to be accepted by someone, especially your peers. Yes, I had all the screaming women, but the guys hated my guts.

If you're already somebody who's feeling different, you'll do everything in your power to fix it because children will do everything in their power to fit in and assimilate.

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.

Middle school was probably my hardest time. I was trying to fit in for so long, until about junior year of high school when I realized that trying to fit into this one image of perfection was never going to make me happy.

I think who you are in school really sticks with you. I don't ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It's like, 'Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.'

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 could never dream of being cool.

I'm not as cool as I'm supposed to be.

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

I don't want to be too cool. You get so caught up with whether you're doing it right.

People are so scared to really voice who they are. They want to be politically correct. Just scared to see what other people's perceptions are.

I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition - and I have never suffered from it.

Growing up, I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test, and there were a thousand ways to fail, a thousand ways to betray yourself, to not live up to someone else's standards of what was accepted, of what was normal.

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 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.

I think it really holds you back having to think about your image.

I don't like to interview people in front of their friends; they clam up.

Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers?

I'm basically a professional nerd, and I'm still not cool. I'm around people who are cool sometimes, and I know I'm not them. But that's OK; I don't care.

When I was younger, I went through a phase when I didn't like my hair. Because the school I went to was primarily Caucasian, there wasn't anyone who had my hair texture. I remember one day I straightened my hair, and that was the first day that people gave me compliments on it.