Quotes About Belonging

I love London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris - there are a million places I could imagine I like, but N.Y. is home.

I think it is one of the common themes for many Japanese people to choose where to live: Tokyo or their hometown.

It's hard to be a minority. People look at you a different way, like you don't belong, and I don't think many people realize just how difficult it is to live as a minority. Where I come from, we learn to tolerate one another. Whether one is of Chinese descent or Malay descent, what matters is we're part of the same country, the same world.

I am not quite sure where home is right now. I do have places in London and Milan, and a house in Spain. I guess I would say home is where my mother is, and she lives in Spain.

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.

And, such was the sound that the chorus made together, that to have been a part of it at all was enough for me.

These other peoples might hate Vienna or think they did, but Vienna could not of its intrinsic being hate them for she was made up of them.

This is my skin and not just the bag that keeps everything together.

Rhea had understood then why people need friends. They need to be seen and known, and accepted nonetheless. Oh, how she'd craved that unburdening

Outsiders pretend to be insiders, and it makes them unlikable. Insiders pretend to be outsiders, and we love to play along.

I asked my parents to buy me a Lite Brite like the one I played with in school, and they did. It was the only toy I had that plugged in, that was bought new... I couldn't reconcile it with the other things in my room and in our house, and I can'r remember every playing with it. It was mine, but I didn't feel worthy of using it. It wasn't my turn to use it yet, not when it was still brand-new.

You still haven't said where you come from. Where is your home?" I said, "I am a sheath, so home is wherenever my shade, my blade is.

Sometimes, all you need to give you a feeling of security is the knowledge that home is there for you. That the people you love are there for you. You don't need to be with them all the time.

Comprendía lo que era la necesidad de estar rodeada de gente. A ella le pasaba lo mismo. No era que no pudiera estar sola, porque sí podía. Pero si le daban a elegir, siempre prefería estar con otras personas.

Our culture values perfect pictures of ourselves, mirage, over and above authentic connection. But we meet one another through the imperfect particular of our bodies. Imperfection calls out for affinity—for the beloved to say, I too am broken, but may I join you?

An apartment in New York City tells many truths. It shows where you really stand, relationally. It shows when you came, how much you had, and what kind of people you knew. Her apartment was lonely.

I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It's funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I'm not religious at all. I have no religion.

Maybe we were being a bit unrealistic, but we had this hope that if we could just get into the Ivy League, everything would be set. We dreamed of Gothic libraries and leafy green quads and romantic dorms with fireplaces and guys who were not only cute but also smart and charming, and, quite possibly, British. In college, we believed, we'd finally find our people.

I have to agree with Artforum publisher Charles Guarino: "It's the place where I found the most kindred spirits—enough oddball, overeducated, anachronistic, anarchic people to make me happy." Finally,

It is a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures. Once you leave your birthplace nothing is ever the same.

For was that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not counting?

She will be like everyone, putting on the things she sees the constructions she expects to find there.

I wish that, if anyone should look for faults in this, then they will find them with me, with me and my queer nature, that set me so at odds with the world and all its ordinary rules, I could not find a place in it to live and be content.

Awe is quite a specific experience. It happens when we view beauty amid vastness, predominantly in nature, triggering a deep sense of belonging. Our smallness against a backdrop of immensity reminds us of our insignificance and interconnectedness, which brings about a profound, yet elated, peace.