I've always felt like my nose is pressed to glass. I always feel a little bit like an outsider.
When you feel like an outsider - for whatever reason - you spend a lot of time alone.
People don't really understand, but having people stare, and point, and take pictures, even if it is in a positive framework, is quite isolating; there's no two ways about it. You feel a little bit, you know, freakish.
I used to listen to 'Perfect Day' by Hoku every single day in high school! 'On this perfect day, nothin' standin' in my way... Don't you try to rain on my perfect day.' It pumped me up when I was feeling down or defeated, whether it was from the cool kids making me feel left out or feeling overwhelmed with homework and mean teachers.
If anybody could put themselves in that situation of feeling a giant loud voice saying you don't deserve the same rights, you are different and you are not equal, it feels really bad.
If someone is being bullied or feels like an outsider, and they relate to something that I've done, even if it's just igniting a spark, that's great. I had that feeling as a kid. I was messed with no end.
Hard times don't necessarily mean being poor all the time. I've known people that was a part of a family and always feel that the family likes everybody else but them. That hurts and that's as deep a hurt as you can possibly get.
When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you’re not in it, there’s a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.
Wait. Let me guess. You’re giving me the cold shoulder, right?” With that, she sighed. “Shouldn’t you be with your friends, staring at yourselves in the mirror?” He laughed. “That’s funny. I’ll have to remember that.” “I’m not being funny. I’m being serious.” “Oh, because we’re so good-looking
I think a lot of people in their lives feel like they don't fit in, even if it looks like they do. People feel like outsiders even if others think we, the lives we live, have everything. If they are popular or they have everything they are supposed to have. Even then, people still don't feel quite included.
I think everyone in high school at one point feels like they're on the outside observing what's going on. Even if you're very popular, you have an outsider experience.
I have always been in the minority, even when I was in the majority.
I think the thrust of any child is to try to fit in and be part of it. And I can't tell you how many times my humor, you know, what I thought was humor ended up making me the outsider. Like I'd be, I go, 'It's a joke.' And they'd go, 'Well, what was funny?' And they just thought I was insane.
Sometimes I feel like I've got my nose pressed up against the window of a bakery, only I'm the bread.
I was a complete outsider in high school.
It bothered me that whatever was waiting wasn't waiting for me
I felt on the periphery of high school culture; one of those invisible creatures that walk the campus. I think it was a lot worse for my parents.
I don't like being out of the crowd. It's lonely within a group.
I used to say I didn't regret dropping out of school because it's what I had to do. But I do feel it. There are certain conversations I feel excluded from. When people talk about Greek history, I just have to sit there and listen. I excuse myself from games of Trivial Pursuit.
No matter what you eventually become - free, empowered - the lingering feeling of 'once an outsider, always an outsider' is very vivid for me.
It is a mark of the depth of their wounding that they are pretending they suspected it all along. Everything that they have seen and been told about love so far has been an inside perspective, and they are not prepared for the crashing weight of this exclusion. It dawns on them now how much they never saw and how little they were wanted, and with this dawning comes a painful re-imagining of the self as peripheral, uninvited, and utterly minor.
Some people are so sensitive that they feel snubbed if an epidemic overlooks them.
I never felt like I was in the grime scene. I was the outsider. So when I veered away from it, I didn't feel like I was leaving the circle - I felt like I was never in it.
I hate this bizarre policy of protective exclusion, because it effectively writes me off the page.
I've known people that was a part of a family and always feel that the family liked everyone else but them. That hurts, and that's as deep a hurt as you can possibly get. I've known people that would have problems with their love life. This is kind of how blues began - out of feeling misused, mistreated. Feeling like they had nobody to turn to. Blues don't necessarily have to be sung by a person that came from Mississippi as I did, because there are people having problems all over the world.
