Quotes About Belonging

I was in a special class, where you skip a grade - you go from seventh to ninth. But I got kicked out. You had to maintain an 85 average, and I didn't. I was too focused on trying to be popular.

I'd go to lesbian parties. I felt like I wasn't hard enough to be butch, but I wasn't wearing heels and a skirt - I wasn't femme - so I felt like I was sort of invisible.

Sometimes I get slammed because I work at Fox and I am black. People are like, 'How could you work there? Who are you?' People really want to know what are your politics personally. Some of them, not everybody.

After I arrived in Mountain View, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang.

I do feel like an outsider, but I don't lose any sleep over it.

I love coming home, sleeping in my own bed, seeing my own family and friends again. It feels like a big comfort for me.

The biggest thing is, I can never forget where I come from. That's why I wear Miami on my sleeve. I never forget where I grew up.

I wear my Judaism on my sleeve - and my face for that matter.

I think everybody carries a slight sense of being different, and I know that it comes very naturally to me.

I think I gravitate towards characters who are slight outsiders.

I always felt slightly grubbier than most American people.

I don't see the point of belonging to a party on the increasingly dubious assumption that it's slightly less bad than the opposition.

I was questioning what it means to be a man. I didn't feel as masculine as I thought I should. I was out of shape, slightly depressed, inactive, and didn't feel like I belonged to something. I started thinking about what the definition of a man is, and realized they're all these archaic tropes.

But now I feel off the grid. I feel that I am not part of the culture. And because I don't have a car I don't really go anywhere to buy things. In fact, I have been in a slow process of selling and giving away everything I own.

I'm slowly feeling more Chinese and feel I should be more proud of being Chinese and appreciate where I've come from.

I like to see the kids in my area wearing England shirts, not Pakistan or India ones. A lot of it comes from the older generations but it's changing slowly, especially if people like myself and Ravi Bopara are playing for England.

You had to do some club after school and it was either the sports or the intellectuals. And right smack in the middle was the acting thing for all the outcasts, which I fell into pretty easily.

Don't let yourself be small because you want to fit in.

What motivates me is everything that I have been a small part of.

I guess more than anything, Green Bay just felt like home. You know, small town, good people who love their football... it was a really great experience being a part of that culture.

I grew up in a very small town in Massachusetts, and it goes without saying that there weren't many Nigerian families in that town, and a lot of people couldn't say Uzoamaka.

I did grow up in a small town. I grew up in a lot of different places. But I consider my home to be Cleveland.

I grew up in a small town in a low-income family and was the only black kid in my elementary school. I felt like an outsider, and since I didn't know of LGBT people - much less LGBT black women - living happy, healthy, and successful lives, I didn't believe I could ever marry or have a child.

So basically, you know, the first day on the job you get there and you realize everybody has a Nerf gun. They had, you know, the smaller ones that shoot the darts. So part of the rite of passage of coming to the company is you have to get your own.