We don’t yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.

I’m not allowed to be who I really am.

I was an innocent 6 year old boy when I was bullied & I was a damaged, bipolar, paranoid, & social phobic 17 year old boy when it stopped, because I stopped it.

I meant that the hatred of that July day in Nashville was alive and well on that horrible day in Pittsburgh. People hate others so they strike like snakes. It’s all connected—we’re all connected, bumping...

Brandon was like a God in Healy, and I guess I was like God’s best friend.

Asshole Proximity Disorder

People try to say suicide is the most cowardly act a man could ever commit. I don’t think that’s true at all. What’s cowardly is treating a man so badly that he wants to commit...

Each of us is a book waiting to be written, and that book, if written, results in a person explained.

tough.” I think of the stuff Dad has said over the years. How he finally gave up suggesting things. Why are you asking me this? I never figured out what to do about my own...

A young outcast will often feel that there is something wrong with himself, but as he gets older, grows more confident in who he is, he will adapt, he will begin to feel that there...

It’s basically the same in all periods of societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.”And those troubling things are all you /can/ think about when you’re...

When my reputation was at its height, classmates insulted me right to my face as I walked down the hall. When a teacher called on me, boys snickered and girls rolled their eyes. My body...

We make fun of those we’re most scared of becoming.

When I was in the third grade, I did my very best to fail every class so that the kids would like me and stop calling me a teacher’s pet. It did not work out...

Never do a wrong thing to make a friend–or to keep one.

…research tells us that we judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing. If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest...

She used to write all the time,’ Elizabeth explained, ‘before she lost all that weight. Remember? When she was the butt of everyone’s jokes instead of the girl all the boys want to date?

problem” is to vex, annoy, threaten or harrass them, you are almost certainly a bigger asshole.6. You may also be twelve.7. You are not responsible for anyone else’s actions or karma, but you are responsible...

Forcing your love on someone who doesn’t love you is an emotional rape, because your victim’s heart was not aroused, you jumped into it without foreplay.

how are they going to get me?”). Persecution becomes inevitable, inescapable. And once you get into the victim mindset, you’re fucked. The bullies don’t even need to hurt you now; your poor, warped, pathetic brain...

He’s the kind of kid who, just looking at him, you know gets bullied by the older boys and takes it out on everyone who is either weaker than him or required to refrain from...

I want to leave behind me the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy, or turned his back on a big one.

Words stick, even when we don’t want them to.

It was a single line amid a wall of hate. It barely made a difference.But it was a start—and that was all that mattered.

I, too, am a drum major for justice. I will continue to speak out-LOUD and PROUD- as long as gay youth are killing themselves because someone instilled in them they are not enough. Well, baby,...

I’d known cruelty in a school—cruelty that would keep these amateurs up all night. But this kind of scene—crowds batting around a person because they thought he was weak—happened to be my personal trigger.

This is followed by laughter because we’re in high school, which means we’re predictable and almost everything is funny, especially if it’s someone else’s public humiliation.

We are supposed to call poison medicine and we wonder why we’re always sick.

Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.

When people see you’re happy doing what you’re doing, it sort of takes the power away from them to tease you about it.

And really–I would rather suck truck fumes than deal with this sort of shit forever. Mom says that Nader is a loser who will grow up to be a loser and that I’ll understand when...

Remember that an act of hatred belittles the one who acts it out – but not the one it is done against unless that person allows it to. Each person who reaches out in love...

Banning books is just another form of bullying. It’s all about fear and an assumption of power. The key is to address the fear and deny the power.

If I had been armed with a feminist understanding that no girl deserves to be called a slut, perhaps I would have fought back by reporting the harassment to my school’s headmistress or another school...

There will be many times in your lives— at school, and more particularly when you are a grown up—when people will distract or divert you from what needs to be done. You may even welcome...

Our victimization in a way, can turn us into bullies because, the other person isn’t doing something that we want and we get hurt. That way we get to bully that person and tell them...

For in today’s generation of teenagers finding acceptance is hard, especially for those who dare to be different-then it’s impossible.

Just as we have created a society in which it would be unthinkable to light up a cigarette in the Kennedy Center lobby, we can create a society where it is unthinkable that a child...

you know what her punishment is for tormenting you way back when?” he said.I looked at him.He said, “her punishment is being her,

Who knows.

But the coconut is also a symbol of resilience, Samar. Even in the conditions where there’s very little nourishment and even less nurturance, it flourishes, growing taller than most of the plants around it.

I finally understood what could drive kids to show up with guns and shoot up their schools.

If you’re horrible to me, I’m going to write a song about it, and you won’t like it. That’s how I operate.

People who repeatedly attack your confidence and self-esteem are quite aware of your potential, even if you are not.

Nonetheless, with tears coming to her eyes she was also recalling every time that she had been cruelly teased and bullied for no reason that she could relate to. None of it had ever been...

Sure, you can scribble out the words or try to paint over them, but beneath the layers of paint and ink, they’re still there, branded to our cores like initials carved in a tree.

Listen up, Little Miss Fun Hater. Off the record, if it wasn’t for our school’s strict but smarmy anti-bullying laws, I would bitch-slap you into next summer.

I just saved you from having to find a nice way to say no to the leg dragger.

Often the right path is the one that may be hardest for you to follow. But the hard path is also the one that will make you grow as a human being.

Bullying is an attack upon the runts of the litter – the weak of the species, and it is predicated on a lack of bond with the parents. If a child has a secure bond...