Top 60 Shannon Purser Quotes

I love that ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’ is an interracial couple.

I totally am dorky and weird, and that’s fine with me.

I related to ‘Sierra’ in the fact that I tend to come off as pretty confident in who I am, but definitely in high school I had a lot of insecurity and was unsure if I should be changing myself to fit in more.

I was always taller than every other boy my age. So, whenever there was one boy who was taller than me I was like, ‘Yes. He’s the one.’ Even if he definitely wasn’t.

I feel like, especially in Hollywood, you meet people with ulterior motives, who are trying to get something from you.

I think there were so many times that I just felt so overwhelmed by school and by my relationships with my friends and I felt like I was going to be stuck in high school forever and I was never going to achieve my dreams.

I was diagnosed with OCD and depression, and that was a huge relief, because now my struggles had a name and could be reckoned with. With a combination of therapy and medication, I got better. I learned to love life again. My problems didn’t go away, but they became much easier to face.

When I was a kid I was a huge reader, I always had a book in my hand.

As an actor, your life is filled with so much uncertainty.

My existence in Hollywood is a political statement, because there are so few women who are plus-sized or above a size 6.

I was definitely always the bigger girl and kind of weird. I didn’t make friends very easily and I was a big reader, so I was very antisocial, and I knew that people were judging me.

That’s what I love about movies and TV: You can go anywhere any time and be whoever you want.

People will send me pictures of T-shirts with my face on it and it’s nothing that I ever would’ve imagined in a million years as a kid.

At some point, I stumbled across an article about OCD. As I read, I was blown away by how identical the writer’s description was to what I was experiencing. It was overwhelmingly comforting to finally realize that I wasn’t alone and that nothing was wrong with me. It was a treatable disorder.

I think society is so hard on young women. Growing up, the images that I saw, the standards that I had to live up to in terms of how I looked and how I fit into my social groups – it was a lot of pressure.

I’m always going to love Barb and I’m always going to be grateful to ‘Stranger Things’ and for the incredible opportunity I’ve had.

Playing the nerd isn’t necessarily the most ego-boosting role.

I was into this one guy that was like, punk and cool and rock ‘n roll. So I went out and bought black high top Converse.

You don’t have to be the next Einstein. You can just be you, and that’s more than good enough.

Some of the best relationships I had in high school were not romantic – they were with my best girlfriends.

I think the best relationship you’ll ever have is the one with yourself. That might even be the most important one.

Everyone has been an outcast at one point in their life.

We’re constantly bombarded with perfect airbrushed images. Every magazine you look at is like ‘top 20 tricks to have the perfect body’ and it’s ridiculous.

I guess everyone’s had an experience when they felt overlooked, ditched, hurt or taken for granted. Where they felt like the only one behaving with common sense but still got the short end of the stick. We all feel like the odd one out at some point.

I think people find it so easy to write off teenagers and millennials as just being like these shallow, self-centered people who don’t have anything real going on and who are always just on their cell phones. But being a teenager is really hard.

A lot of times, gay characters are represented in unrealistic or stereotypical ways.

I would definitely love to see a queer rom-com because representation matters. It does so much to help normalize things in the mind of society.

I think the media in general hasn’t been very kind to fat women or fat people. We see so many insensitive portrayals of plus-sized people. That kind of stuff really affected me – not even necessarily the portrayal of fat people, but the absence of fat people.

I think people are more alike than they are different, especially in high school. No matter what clique you belong to, everybody’s trying to get approval and trying to fit in.

I’m very interested in makeup and fashion and beauty.

I don’t have a typical body type, and that used to be something that made me feel very alone and weird.

As fun as it is to be the nerdy best friend. I’m capable of more than that, and I feel that I have emotions to share, and there are roles I can add something to. I just hope there are other people who are willing to take that chance on me and let me tell their stories.

I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety several years ago, so it’s something I’ve been battling most of my life.

As I got into high school I sort of came into my own and gained some confidence and, luckily, wasn’t really bullied by others.

I love the style from the ’80s, obviously some of it is a little, you know, out there.

I’ve found beauty in such unexpected places. I think the most beautiful thing you can do is be yourself and to own it.

I don’t know why, but I’m more intimidated by sharing my singing than just performing as an actress.

It’s always been important to me to do work that I’m proud of and be part of stories that I’m proud of, so being on a popular show was never really the goal.

I feel that responsibility to really be authentic with people because I think that’s what they deserve, especially in a time when it’s very easy for people in the public eye to sort of cultivate an image.

When I was a little kid, I used to get in trouble a lot for lying. Being raised religious, I believed that lying was sinful, so I felt guilty.

I didn’t get recognized a whole lot at first, but all of a sudden it just started happening. People would look at me out of the corner of their eye, deciding whether or not they were going to come up to me!

Acting isn’t always about the amount of talent you have, or your ability to cry on command. The point is, how well can you take direction? How well can you put aside your own ideas or ego and listen to the ideas of the director and the people above you, while not giving up the passion and drive of that character?

I think once I kind of got to a place of self-acceptance, looking past all the insecurities that I have, I’ve really grown so much as a person.

With ‘Stranger Things’ especially, I couldn’t expect the show to become what it was, and I definitely didn’t expect the whole Barb thing to become what it was.

I’ve been a huge Winona Ryder fan for a while. I’m one of four girls, so there are four sisters, so we used to watch ‘Little Women’ seriously, maybe once a month.

I think people need a little light and a little happiness in their lives.

It’s movies like ‘Love, Simon’ that are so pivotal because it’s this sweet rom-com that you would watch about a straight couple, but it’s two guys. It feels natural and real and just charming. I would love to see more movies like that.

When you’re on stage, you’re playing to whoever is in the back of the room, and TV and film is so much more detailed and nuanced, but I think that’s what I always wanted to do. As much as I love theater and musical theater and would love to do it again, I really love the subtleties of film and theater acting.

Technology is a double-edged sword for sure. You can use it to get in touch with somebody, to get to know somebody, to have really meaningful conversations, or you can use it to hurt and bully people.

I’ve been singing since I was a little kid, but ‘Sierra’ was my first time singing on camera, which was definitely intimidating at first.

The ’80s weren’t perfect and people made some questionable fashion choices but in terms of music and movies, it was revolutionary and wonderful.

It’s incredible, but I will sing the praises of therapy. I think everybody should be in therapy. It helps so much to have somebody educated you can talk to.

Everybody has had that experience where your friend drags you to a party because the person they’re crushing on is there, and you don’t really want to be there but you go there with them anyway.

I’m pretty introverted and I spend a lot of time in books, a lot of time thinking and by myself, because that’s what I enjoy to recharge.

People have actually had my face tattooed on to their bodies, which is so odd.

Being on set is just a unique and surreal experience, and it’s one I always dreamed about having. And then I had it.

But I’ve always loved the whole costuming part of acting.

I had this incredible opportunity with ‘Stranger Things,’ and now all it tells me is that people like my work, so I need to keep working. I need to push forward and put as much of my heart into every character I play as I did into Barb.

You never think about someone dressing up as you for Halloween.

I just think about little me – what it would have meant to me to see a chubby girl in movies and a big girl get the guy and be the princess, be the hero. I think that would’ve really changed a lot for me.