Angela Chase quotes from My So-Called Life

Angela

[voiceover] So, I started hanging out with Rayanne Graff, just for fun. Just 'cause it seemed like if I didn't, I would die, or something. ...Things were getting to me. Just how people are -- how they always expect you to be a certain way. Even your best friend. ...Like, with boys, like they have it so easy. Like you have to pretend you don't notice them noticing you. ...Like cheerleaders. Can't people just cheer on their own? Like to themselves? ...School is a battlefield for your heart. So when Rayanne Graff told me my hair was holding me back, I had to listen. 'Cause she wasn't just talking about my hair. She was talking about my life.

Angela

[voiceover] My dad and I used to be pretty tight. The sad truth is, my breasts have come between us.

Angela

[voiceover] My parents keep asking how school was. It's like saying, "How was that drive-by shooting?" You don't care how it was, you're lucky to get out alive.

Angela

[voiceover] I've been kissed 3 times. No, 4 times. No, 3 times. All of them were people I never saw again. Which I hope doesn't like, mean something.

Angela

[voiceover] Grown-ups like to tell you where they were when President Kennedy was shot, which they all know to the exact second. Which makes me almost jealous -- like I should have something important enough to know where I was when it happened. But I don't, yet. And the fact that it was a better time then, and people knew what they were supposed to do and how to make the world better...now nobody knows anything. We know who's popular, or that Social Studies is boring, or that Brian always has stomach trouble -- but nobody knows anything important. Instead of changing the world, people sit in class and write notes about other people.

Angela

[voiceover] It's such a lie that you should do what's in your heart. If we all did what was in our hearts, the world would grind to a halt.

Angela

[voiceover] It's amazing the things you notice, like the corner of his collar that was coming undone. Like, he was from a poor family and couldn't afford new shirts. That's all I could see. The whole world was that unraveled piece of fabric.

Angela

[voiceover] When you're not sure you trust a person anymore -- say, a person you really trusted; say your father -- you start wishing they'd do something, like, really wrong, just so you could be right about them.

Angela

[voiceover] You know how sometimes the last sentence you said, like, echoes in your brain, and it just keeps sounding stupider? And you have to say something else just to make it stop?

Angela

[voiceover] The worst feeling is suddenly realizing that you don't measure up, and that, in the past, when you thought you did, you were a fool.

Angela

[voiceover] It had become the focus of everything. It was all I could feel, all I could think about. It blotted out the rest of my face, the rest of my life. Like the zit had become...the truth about me.

Angela

[voiceover] Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison, and the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while, and admit the truth -- that when you really look closely, people are so strange and so complicated that they're actually...beautiful. Possibly even me.

Angela

[voiceover] Maybe teachers have a hidden life. Where they're actually... like, human. Where they have, I don't know... dignity. Or maybe not.

Angela

[voiceover] Love is when you look into someone's eyes and suddenly you go all the way inside, to their soul, and you both know instantly. I always imagined I'd fall in love nursing a blind soldier who was wounded in battle. Or maybe while rescuing someone in the middle of a blizzard, seconds before the avalanche hits. I thought at least by the age of 15 I'd have a love life, but I don't even have a like life!

Angela

[voiceover] Huge events take place on this earth every day. Earthquakes, hurricanes...even glaciers move. So why couldn't he just...look at me?