112 Quotes About Fitting-in

Don't stay in the harbour and miss the greatness of the sea. Just because everyone else is anchored, doesn't mean you have to be.

Theirs was a language I didn’t, and couldn’t, speak. They had concerns in life to which I couldn’t relate; my problems were about surviving. When you have really big, dark things happen to you, it takes a lot more to care about things. It felt like I was about eight thousand years old in a small person’s body, essentially an alien among those who understood traditional societal constructs.

I don't fit into any stereotypes. And I like myself that way.

Teenagers are complicated and at times stubborn, yes, but we are not dumb. We see the world in a different light than the rest do, and sometimes, we’re misunderstood because of it. And that’s alright. That must be the definition of ‘human being’: Misunderstood. But neither of us should tolerate degradation in any of it forms.

We won’t be able to choose who we’ll have to talk to in order to keep advancing in life. We won’t always like them, and they will most likely not like us back either, so it’s wrong to confine ourselves in our own little worlds when there’s plenty of it outside to explore.

Friend, I love your rebellious heart.

Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out?

Maybe it's wrong-footed trying to fit people into the world, rather than trying to make the world a better place for people.[as quoted in "Brain Gain" by Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 4/27/09 issue]

She may have been among them but she could never be one of them. She was without inclusion for-as-much as she was not "one of the girls" and she wasn't "one of the guys." She was an outsider gazing in, endlessly comfortless, while they wished they had what it took to be less like the others and more like her.