Sandra Cisneros Quotes

I don't understand anyone thinking I'm sexy at all. I don't get it because, growing up as a kid, I wasn't. I was like a dork, fat, so for me it's really weird. I became famous in Australia when I was 18, and I was still a little bit chubby.

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'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.

I've never liked my smile, you see. I should have had braces as a kid, but I was too proud and too vain. And I didn't want to be bullied at school.

I've never been cool.

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 was never the cool kid in school, and loads of people told me that I was weird, that I dressed uncool and did uncool things, that I was too nice, too happy.

Eleanor Roosevelt was painfully shy, painfully shy. So she overcompensated. In the same way that Nancy Reagan felt unattractive and unlovable and so everything had to be - hair had to be perfect, and the makeup and the clothes. Because she thought, "They don't think I'm pretty."

I wish I were the type who could walk into a place and have everybody love me. But I'm not, and there's no use wishing.

I wasn't a naturally confident, extravert, outgoing person.

I think everyone at school experiences some form of bullying. With kids at school, it can be anything - it can be your shoes or the wrong bag or anything. If you are big like I am, you are always going to be a target. So I decided at school to make myself an even bigger target, if you like: to make myself as big as I could be.

When I was labeled stupid, that scarred me forever.

I always thought I was a little shy, especially compared to my brother and my sister, but I guess I was always the kid doing performances in the front room.

Growing up, I was picked on a bit; I was pretty heavy-set, and then I was a theater kid. I just felt unpopular and uncool, so I think in my mind I had this idea of fame and being popular and how nice that would be. The reality of it is sometimes it's not nice.

You can be chased home or hit or called names or spit on, and it's over. You have the memory of it, but it's very different from the emotional and psychological experience of feeling invisible, of not learning the confidence to stand up in class and speak.

I'm not as shy as everybody makes me out to be.

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.

I love people who aren't embarrassed. I'm always embarrassed, so it's always astonishing to me when people aren't like that.

I remember in second grade, everybody in the class had to come up with adjectives for each other, and I got shy. In a way, I force myself to perform, because if I didn't, I'd stay home rolled up in a ball watching 'The Real Housewives of Orange County' all day.

I like not being noticed. It has been a struggle because I love performing, but if I'm in a group of people and someone has a bigger personality, I'm like, 'Go ahead, and have fun!'

You know all those models who say, 'I was so tall and lanky and everyone picked on me at school' - I was not that girl. I hear that and I'm like, 'Oh, you poor thing!'

I think kids growing up, if they were picked on and feeling inferior at 12, they're going to feel that way at 72. You just deal with it better. I'm serious.

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.

Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.

I could never dream of being cool.