Quotes About Belonging

Just be who you are,' said Beth, 'because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

God was in love with him, that he made us for himself.

She reached her doorstep. The key turned sweetly in the lock. That was the kind of thing one remembered about a house: not the size of the rooms or the color of the walls, but the feel of the door-handles and light-switches, the shape and texture of the banister-rail under one's palm; minute tactual intimacies, whose resumption was the essence of coming home.

That would be no less shrewd: for when you first come home from a strange place you are always something of a ghost. They were sorry when you went away, and they welcome you back with affection: but in the meanwhile they have adjusted their lives a little to your absence.

I don't think there's enough time to repair some things. Some things just become part of a person, like their skin color. It doesn't have to define them, but it's always with them.

Let's go home," he said. Home. That word meant something completely different now than it had before. It meant everything.

As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us whatever the turn of fortune.

Making a self can be like writing, and now I think writing can be like home: a space you make that you dwell in and roam through for hours every day, a space that's absolutely yours.

Houses! I hate houses. I like public places. Houses break your heart.

A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, "This is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.

For as long as I can remember, I have always had the feeling of not quite fitting in, not being the same as everyone else.

Your child is constantly making decisions about himself and the world, and how to find belonging and significance in that world.

From his earliest moments in your family, your young child has four basic needs: 1. A sense of belonging (connection) 2. A sense of personal power and autonomy (capability) 3. Social and life skills (contribution) 4. Kind and firm discipline that teaches (with dignity and respect)

the primary social goal of children (and adults) was to belong and feel significant within their family or social group. Although they are not always conscious of this goal, children constantly adjust their behavior to achieve a sense of belonging (connection) and significance (responsibility and capability).

She could feel the emotion in the place pressing up against the walls, all eyes alert, hearts beating as one, the sense that everyone there was part of something bigger than themselves. That was a powerful emotion. It was the emotion that the Third Reich relied on. It was the kind of emotion that could move mountains.

You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me.

If Irish or Italian culture dies in America it really isn't that big a deal. They will still exist in Italy and Ireland. Not so with us. There is no other place. North America is our old country.

She remembered the old man in the bar in the Mission District telling her, 'We are the biggest tribe of all, us displaced ones, us urban Indians, us sidewalk redskins.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

Home is where you will always have a place, where you will always feel loved, and you will never be alone.

They whisper: no little man from Customs and Immigration stands at the doors of memory or imagination demanding to see your passport. No arts bureaucrat or ComLit satrap can stamp OzLit, CanLit, FemLit, MigrantLit, or Displaced Person on your visa.

My schoolmates hurried home the way they always did, the bold kids scuffling and shouting and the timid, gawky ones yearning toward a brief return to their real lives in which they were their mamas' treasures instead of the dull, easily bullied children they impersonated at school.

I carry the landscape inside me like an ache. The story of who I am cannot be severed from the story of the flatwoods.

The Hall of Fame concert was shown on HBO over Thanksgiving, and the next day Dylan called. "How come I wasn't there? Those were my people. I should have been there.