A Quote by John Amaechi

I just wanted to fit in, so probably early on I knew, but it was... social life was such a distant part of my existence when I was in school that I didn't even think about it too much.
I was too self-conscious in high school. I wanted to fit in or to disappear. I was a very uncomfortable person in high school, very uncomfortable with my body and I just didn't feel like I fit in. I wanted to be invisible.
I sort of knew very early on that I wanted to be a writer. Even in high school, I was a big movie buff, very much into TV shows, and would critique them.
Being honest about being bullied in school and my bipolar was not so much of a 'do I or don't I?'; it was waiting for the right time. Even before I knew what making a mark on the world meant, I knew I wanted to make a difference.
I used to ride the school bus to school and just listen to music with my headphones. I'd stick my head out the window and just think about how much I wanted to be a singer. I always wanted to do it, but I think I was always in the wrong place. I didn't really have any opportunities. So I left LA four years ago and I really just left my old life behind. I threw everything into pursuing music.
I don't get up and look at e-mail. I don't even know my e-mail address. I needed one just to have a computer put on. But I never, ever even thought of going to it. It's just not what I'm about. I just don't want to waste my life with it. It's just too much; I think people are just a little too absorbed in all of that.
My schooling was very conservative. I went to Trinity School, and then to the Hill School, which is a boarding school, then to Yale. My parents got divorced in that period, and I realized I didn't have a life anymore. I was the only child, so a three-person family breaks apart. I ended up very conformist, very scared, very lonely. I couldn't go on with Yale, just couldn't do it. I'd been doing too much of that for too long. I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn't want, which was to go to Wall Street and join the crowd there.
As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes before I ever flew in one. I really knew, when I started photographing, I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to enter other lives. I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.
I grew up an only child, and I always felt as if I didn't fit in. In middle school, in grammar school, and even high school, I just didn't feel like I fit in.
I loved doing school musicals [as a kid], I even started at an early age to write little plays for the school to perform. I was not just keen on that, it was during that time, during the school period then from an early age, that I began to dream about acting.
We had a motto in my school: 'Men for Others.' And it was there that my faith became something vital. My north star for orienting my life. And when I left high school, I knew that I wanted to battle for social justice.
From an early age, I knew I wanted to pursue a life in the arts, and so I was acting in plays all throughout high school.
I established early what I was and wasn't willing to accept. People tried to say what I had to do, whether it be pop or R&B, to be successful. Even when I was in the girl group, they would try to make our voices sound very radio-friendly and fit that mold. But even before I got signed, I knew who I was and who I wanted to be.
But in my defense, I knew enough about her to know I wanted to know everything else; I knew as much about her as she wanted me to know; I knew as much about her as anyone ever knows about anyone. And isn't love just curiosity at the beginning anyway?
This is many, many years ago. It was shortly after "Starman" I think. I don't know how close I was to getting the part. I met with [director] Penny Marshall and that's one that I knew would be a hit. It just felt hit-ish. But it's like you go to a store and you see a jacket and you go "I love that jacket" and you try it on and it's too big or too small for you and it's the only one they have. For some reason that part just didn't fit me.
When I decided to take on acting as a career and a profession, I didn't know much about it. I knew that I was passionate about it. There was nothing else I could think of that I wanted to do and that's when I knew it was the right choice. It was also one of the scariest moments of my life.
I knew at a young age that I wanted to do comedy, and maybe part of that was trying to fit in at school because I had a weird name, and my parents had these accents, and I was definitely a late bloomer.
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