Quotes About Belonging

She felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a pounding, living thing inside this body that wasn't really hers either.

went out for sports as others did, in an affable herd.

The kind of man, who, every time he steps through a doorway, he's squinting anxious to see if he's welcome. Even when the doorway is his own.

we so resented that asshole up there talking talking talking taking up the entire assembly expecting us to believe there isn't a special creation of God, or of man, to which we didn't belong, here in the shabby south end of Hammond in the worst damn public school in the district, we didn't belong and never would. And what the hell? ---Such truths, FOXFIRE made softer.

Father, I thank You that You love me. I thank You that I am always accepted and never rejected. In Jesus' name, amen.

Imperfect, but Perfectly Loved

A person is from wherever they feel best, and roots are for plants. Everyone knows that, don't they?

We must be undone in order to do ourselves: we must be part of a larger social fabric of existence in order to create who we are.

that struggling individual on the brink of collective identity

Where is your home? she asked after a long, comfortable silence. Wherever you are.

I lived in New York for eleven and a half years and I don't think anybody ever asked me about my religion. I never even thought about it. Now, all of a sudden, it was the big thing in my life.

If you aren't any religion, how will you know if you should join the Y or the Jewish Community Center?

Oh who owns the school? Oh who owns the school? Oh who owns the school? the people saaaayyyy. . . . Oh we own the school Oh we own the school 'Cause we are sixth graaaaders today!

As ethnic groups struggle to be a part of the mainstream, they are often forced to make a place for themselves by serving the interests of the state.

Patriotism is considered to be an emotion a person ought to feel. But why? Why is it nobler to love your own country than to love someone else's?

Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.

I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can't go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.

After all, what are any of us after but the conviction of belonging?

Where do I belong in this country? Where is home?

Home was a curious thing, like happiness. You never knew you had had it until it was gone.

I may not know who I am, but I know where I am from.

Neither place nor I had a chance of being anything unless we could live together for a while. I spent my youth envying people who had lived all their lives in the houses they were born in, and had attics full of proof that they had lived.

I am a native in this worldAnd think in it as a native thinks.

From this the poem springs: that we live in a place That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.