Quotes About Belonging

Being women together was not enough. We were different. Being gay-girls together was not enough.We were different. Being black together was not enough. We were different. Being black women together was not enough. We were different. Being black dykes together was not enough. We were different.

Once it was easy to know who were my people... I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy.

When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like you, I'm not excluding you from the joining—I'm broadening the joining.

I think that if we begin to think of families in a wider context, groups of people relating to each other in a give-and-take manner, then our definitions of families will broaden so that we have groups of people, sustain groups, support groups, in whatever period of life, whatever time, whatever place, right, that come together and remain

Nobody wrote stories about us, but still people always asked my mother for directions in a crowd.

remember thinking for a while that I was the only Black lesbian living in the Village

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each of us within our hearts knows 'that is not me.

Afraid is a country where they issue us passports at birth and hope we never seek citizenship in any other country.

In a way, I am a psychological transsexual, always trying to pass for a normal person but being clocked every time.

This is the right house and the right life, but it's weird because I've never had a home before; I've had addresses.

In spite of the open, laughing face that the Burmese presented to the world, the ingrained, if inarticulate, conviction of their own nationhood prevented them from truly admitting those they saw as 'foreign' into their inner sancturns.

He always called me Daughter. It was to distinguish me from his sister Ava. I loved being called Daughter. It sounded so possessive, and to be possessed when you are a child is just a wonderful feeling. It makes you feel safe. It makes you feel loved.

Or the people they call terrorists. If it's you who's in the foreign country, and the people you're waiting for arguably have more of a right to be there than you do, who's the terrorist?

Im waiting, for what, my kind of people, what kind is that, i can tell my kind of people by their faces, by something in their faces.

My hands . . . My spirit . . . My sky . . . My forest . . . This earth of mine . . .

It's a rare hurt that can stand under the advice, help, and sympathy generated by upwards of thirty people that care. Callahan loses a lot of his regulars. After they've been coming around long enough, they find they don't need to drink any more.

You came into my life and not the way a casual visitor might (you know, 'without removing one's hat') but as one enters a kingdom, where all the rivers have waited for your reflection, all the roads for your footfall.

A well-connected son of the establishment, he strained to find his place, loitering his way toward his future.

God not only accepts us, he embraces us.

Loneliness is not only positively characterized by a certain degree of isolation, but is negatively characterized by a deficiency of participation.

I don't even remember the season. I just remember walking between them and feeling for the first time that I belonged somewhere.

I remembered this one time that I never told anybody about. The time we were walking. Just the three of us. I was in the middle. I don't remember where we were walking to or where we were walking from. I just remember the season. I just remember walking between them and feeling for the first time that I belonged somewhere

Welcome to the island of misfit toys

I look at people holdings hands in the hallways, and I try to think how it all works. At the school dances, I sit in the background, and I tap my toe, and I wonder how many couples will dance to 'their song.' In the hallways, I see the girls wearing the guys' jackets, and I think about the idea of property. And I wonder if anyone is really happy.