Quotes About Belonging

I grew up as a British kid - I went to school in London, roamed the streets of London - but having these interactions with my roots and going back to Ghana, I'm like, 'Yeah this is sick.' I love my country and my people, and the energy and vibes that they bring back. So I want to rep that and be a part of it.

Yeah you just have to be true to yourself, know where you come from, make sure that your relationships with family members back in country, back home, are really strong so that connection is always there.

Oh yeah, I'm an Essex boy and proud of it.

Yeah, I was born in Montreal and I go back to Vancouver and Toronto a lot, so I have a sense of being Canadian, and I was raised by two Canadians, and my wife is Canadian, so yeah, I feel it.

So many times I've encountered people who are just kind of like, 'Yeah, Nigeria,' and, you know, thump their chest and seem very sure of, like, being Nigerian. And I'm just kind of, like, I wish I could be that sure.

I understand what it's like to come with your family, and to uproot yourself and come to another culture. You need a lot of support. People say, 'She's got her daughter; she's got her husband.' Yeah, but she hasn't got anyone else.

My father's from Australia and my mother was born in India, but she's actually Tibetan. I was born in Katmandu, lived there until I was eight, and then moved to Australia with my mother and father. So yeah, I'm very mixed up, been to many different schools.

I'm Irish, yeah, but I don't need to get up on a soapbox about it.

This is the great thing about Northern Ireland. I walk down the street and people stop me and say things like, 'I know you. You're that wee golfer, aren't you?' I say, 'Yeah, that's me.' They say, 'Keep it up, wee man.' It's very funny and that's why I want to stay here as long as possible.

Yeah, my dad was in the foreign service. We lived in India, Indonesia and Africa, and we traveled a lot from those places. I was 10 when we moved back, and I felt like the odd guy out. It wasn't until later that I appreciated it. But coming back I didn't know any TV shows or music, which was even worse.

I got beat up by the comic-book kids when I was younger! They were cooler than me. Talk about levels of geekdom, I was a couple rungs below the kids who read comic books. Yeah. Not so cool, man.

I think part of picking where you live in New York is accepting who you are. Really looking at yourself and going, 'Yeah, I'm not cool enough for the West Village.'

My family moved from California to New Jersey in the beginning of my sophomore year of high school. I will never forget the first day in a new school, walking into the cafeteria during lunch and not knowing a single soul. I didn't feel confident enough to share a seat at just anyone's table.

When I was thirteen years old, and we had just moved to Germany, I definitely felt I was missing out on normal teenage life. I was watching my old school friends from Canada grow up without me while I was in Germany trying to learn the language and trying to pass each year without failing.

Well, I came the second year. I mean I just fit right in. They wrote a great person and I'm so lucky that I got to be part of the family.

I act most like myself... when I'm in my hometown, Santo Domingo. I try to get there about five times a year.

My first secondary school was in East Finchley, and I was one of only five white people in the year. I was really skinny and flat-chested with frizzy hair. I don't consider myself posh, but my mum brought me up to speak properly, and they picked up on that, as all kids do.

I was born near Bucharest, but my parents came to France a year later. We moved back to Romania when I was thirteen, and my world was shattered. I hated Bucharest, its society, and its mores - its anti-Semitism for example.

I would always have been the geek who's your friend. I will never be the dark guy with a sensitive side, as much as I yearn to be.

The fact is, everything we want or yearn for is won through other people. No man on an island is happy; he is merely existing. The joyous life is the one filled with rich relationships.

I don't know very many people who don't yearn to be accepted, maybe except for myself. I'm in a business where I have to be accepted in order to make a living.

People across the world are yearning to be connected to stories of hope.

I was adopted into this incredible home, a loving, positive environment, yet I had this yearning, this kind of darkness that was also inside me.

As a Korean American, I grew up yearning to see actors that looked like me. On the rare occasions I saw an Asian celebrity, I adored them unflaggingly.