Quotes About Belonging

I didn't have to go. I could fade into the crowd, be pushed along through the tunnel, into the city. I could roll along in my bubble ball. I was used to moving, used to packing up and following along like a robot, but I was tired of it. I wanted to stop moving and I wanted to be somewhere and stay somewhere and I wanted my family.

I don't care if the whole town comes, as long as you come, Bailey boy.

I wish that every baby everywhere could land in a family that wanted that baby as much as we want ours.

It is not a good idea to call yourself a sardine in a family like Leo's, who will not let you forget it.

It is not easy to be stranded between two worlds, the sad truth is that we can never feel completely comfortable in either world.

Pummeling her pillow, she wondered if Ranulf understood about hiraeth. It translated as longing, but meant so much more, the love of the Welsh for their homeland, a sense of belonging, pride in their past, why they did not thrive when uprooted, like plants set down in foreign soil. If Ranulf wanted them to live in England, she would offer no protest, for she would have followed him to Hell if need be. But it would be a life in exile.

If you gotta leave before I come back, I want to thank you for sharing the music. Remember that you're not alone, ever; that there's always the music, connecting all of us, and the whole world, too.

to live apart from the comforts of clan and kin, surrounded by strangers upon whom she must depend for what day-to-day gentleness one human being might have from another.

Maybe I'm not so different from everyone else after all. It's like somebody gave me a puzzle, but I don't have the box with the picture on it. So I don't know what the final thing is supposed to look like. I'm not even sure if I have all the pieces.

We are all too often told by someone that we are too old, too young, too different, too much the same, and those comments can be devastating.

Our ability to connect with others is innate, wired into our nervous systems, and we need connection as much as we need physical nourishment.

We are born ready to love and be loved. It is our birthright.

We have no word for "Nation" in our language.

Indians were always subjects, never citizens; throughout the days of Empire, no Indian could have presumed to say 'I am British' the way a French African was encouraged to say 'Je suis français'.

minorityhood is a state of mind, Mr. Diggs. It is a sense of powerlessness, of being out of the mainstream, of being here on sufferance. I refuse to let others define me that way. I tell my fellow Muslims: No one can make you a minority without your consent.

The path-breaking writer and thinker on nationalism, Benedict Anderson, has convincingly pointed out that identities uniting large numbers of people could arise only after a certain technological level had been attained.

It feels good to hear these words, even if I haven't done anything and we're not even close to being men. Even if we are screwups, losers, and criminals, it's still nice to hear someone like Mr. E tell us different.

Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. Isaiah 43:1–2

John Donne, the sixteenth-century poet, wrote these familiar but profound words: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

I was learning the truth: though I felt lonely and scared, I was the well-loved girl of God. And though these feelings of loneliness were familiar, I was coming into an understanding: just because a place has become familiar doesn't mean its where you belong.

Then too, and this was as romantic as the others, Briartree was the only thing she had ever really owned. Everything else had more or less been lent her; so it seemed. But this was hers, earned by blood, the only good she ever got from being kin to her mother.

Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them but he does not see them. . . .

Don't you see Blaynie. Mitch put his arm around her shoulders. You're like an illegitimate little sister that I never wanted.

Yes, I am Irish and Indian, which would be the coolest blend in the world if my parents were around to teach me how to be Irish and Indian. But they're not here and haven't been for years, so I'm not really Irish or Indian. I am a blank sky, a human solar eclipse.