Hannah Ware Quotes

It took me a long time to blossom. Everyone else understood how to socialize and how to look. I didn't get the memo.

I knew in my heart that I wasn't cool, but I figured I could at least be cool by association.

When I was young, I had this feeling that there was this handbook that I had never gotten that explained how to be, how to laugh, what to wear, how to stand by yourself in the hallway. Everyone looked so natural - like they all practiced and knew exactly what to do - even the way they pushed their hair out of their face.

My hair was always frizzy. I always wanted to be blonde with lovely straight hair. I was very skinny. I was quite tomboyish, just very quiet. I always wanted to fit in; I just couldn't.

All my life - middle school, high school - I've always been worried what are people going to think.

I've never been cool.

I long to be ... Like Other People! The extraordinary, ungetatable, oddly cruel Other People, with their way of wantonly hurting and then accusing you of being thin-skinned, sulky, vindictive or ridiculous.

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 think that all of us are 5-year-olds and we don't want to be embarrassed in the schoolyard.

All of my friends are really good dancers, which was initially why I never danced - we'd go out, and they would kill it, and I'd be like, 'Yeah, I'm just gonna sit at the bar.'

I tried to be really tough when I was younger. I felt I had to stand up for myself. I never felt like I fit in.

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 have this complex that if I walk into a place wearing a colorful shirt someone will stop me and say, 'I'm sorry, but the Latin band comes through the other door.'

Most men are petrified of standing out in any way or being thought superficial.

I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced.

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

I was far too embarrassed to share the experience of Indian food at school. As a kid, you're desperate to fit in, to assimilate in some way, and everything about me stood out.

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.

You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you fear you are an interchangeable cog.

I was a very unconfident teenager. I wanted desperately to fit in.

I am very tall, and when you're a teenager, you want to be like everyone else. I used to slump a lot; it's very human at that stage to want to be part of the crowd and not want any part of you that is sticking out.

I wanted to blend in 'cause I knew I was different.

At first, I was scared that if I claimed I modeled, people would be like, 'What?'

Everyone was wearing jeans, so I started wearing slacks. I'd walk on, and people would laugh before I got to the mic because I looked stupid.

In sixth grade, my status as a Boy Scout was not something I went out of my way to share. In fact, I spent most of my adolescence attempting to keep it a secret from those who might use it as a source of derision. The off-brown collared shirt and forest-green sash were not something I would have ever been caught wearing in front of my friends.