Quotes About Belonging

Toda idea que llega a salir del limbo del pensamiento, y se vulgariza por una manifestación cualquiera, deja de pertenecer hasta al mismo que la ha concebido.

Y entiendo también que su casa somos nosotras, que si sigue ahí aguantando es porque cree que todavía no estamos enteras sin ella y que no se irá hasta dejarnos bien, hasta que que su casa esté bien vivida. Ordenada. Hasta que haya paz.

Decididamente -pensaba- no he nacido para ser lo que hoy se entiende por un buen ciudadano…

Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.

Home is where somebody notices your absence.

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

But the moment you point at a difference, you enter, regardless of age, an already existing system of differences, a network of identities, all of them ultimately arbitrary and unrelated to your intentions, none of them a matter of your choice. The moment you other someone, you other yourself. When I idiotically pointed at Almir's non-existent difference, I expelled myself from my raja.

Tenía consigo la indestructible calma de los hombres que se sienten en su lugar.

È una cosa strana. Quando ti accade di vedere il posto dove saresti salvo, sei sempre lì che lo guardi da fuori. Non ci sei mai dentro. È il tuo posto, ma tu non ci sei mai.

Hij had de onaantastbare rust over zich van mensen die zich op hun plaats voelen.

A voler essere precisi, Novecento non esisteva nemmeno, per il mondo: non c'era città, parrocchia, ospedale, galera, squadra di baseball che avesse scritto da qualche parte il suo nome. Non aveva patria, non aveva data di nascita, non aveva famiglia. Aveva otto anni: ma ufficialmente non era mai nato.

Somehow his praying and his studying made it all right to mix with them. That way, it seemed to him he could remain himself without having to remain by himself.

It was the first time the name had ever been spoken as this child's name, for Omoro's people felt that each human being should be the first to know who he was.

And it is strange: a few moments after the cars that brought us down drive off, I become aware that already I have discovered something new. Because we do not have a place of our own, nor will have for the next three days, we must invent one. I catch myself, and the eyes of one or two others, searching for a section of the pavement with which we might want to become familiar. We are looking among the concrete slabs for the outline of a home.

He looked at her in the darkness, at this woman who was everything to him-mother, Africa, wisdom, understanding, good things to eat, pumpkins, chicken, the white sky across the endless, endless bush, and the giraffe that cried, giving its tears for women to daub on their baskets; O Botswana, my country, my place.

There are many sadnesses in the hearts of men who are far away from their countries.

The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die. I love Africa, which is my mother and my father. When I am dead, I shall miss the smell of Africa

How remarkable it was, she thought, that we managed to anchor ourselves at all in this world, and that we did so by giving ourselves names and linking those names with places and other people.

Everything, all those great things, had happened so far away--or so it seemed to [Mma Ramotswe] at the time. The world was made to sound as if it belonged to other people--to those who lived in distant countries that were so different from Botswana; that was before people had learned to assert that the world was theirs too, that what happened in Botswana was every bit as important, and valuable, as what happened anywhere else.

Perhaps one day she would find a place where she would stay. That would be good. To know that the place you were in was your own place—where you should be.

However she redefined herself, that part of one that made for the core of the self, that part that we think of as the ultimate, inner being—that was ineradicable Scottish. That part spoke with a Scottish voice; that part looked out through Scottish eyes; and it was that part that now welled within her as she gazed out through the window of the descending plane and saw below her the rolling Borders hills…

And Edinburgh. He was proud of Edinburgh too, and of Scotland; and why not? Why should one not be proud of one's country - for a change?

I said to him that Zululand sounded fine, but that every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map.

There is no need to be unkind to people who are unhappy inside themselves. There is room for everyone. Everyone should be able to find somewhere on this earth to sit down.