Quotes About Belonging

I've eight brothers and sisters - five girls, four boys. I am the seventh.

So I've got mates I've known since I was five years old. Their children know my children. There's something really lovely about it. When you're an immigrant - my parents were immigrants, their brothers and sisters lived all over the world, Florida, Jamaica, some in Europe - it's a grounding thing. That community is critical.

My family is mostly a chosen one. I've managed to invite some really amazing people into my life and they become family. Brothers, sisters, siblings, mentors, role models. And I like to live that way, where your family bleeds out into the larger community.

I'm still really close with everyone at home and their parents - and their brothers and sisters. I was so, so, so lucky to grow up as part of a community and I don't take that for granted. I try very hard to stay part of it.

From the newest arrivals to our Native American brothers and sisters, we are one America.

I always felt that at the moment I was born, God must have blinked. He missed the occasion and never knew I had arrived. My parents had 11 children. While I love them and my five brothers and five sisters deeply, some days I felt lost in the litter.

I grew up in a family with three brothers and sisters who joined my family through the foster care program, and I also have a sister who joined my family through a faith-based organization.

My mother was born in Ghana, but she moved to the U.K. when my sisters and I were born.

I am happy that I have landed 'Shastri Sisters' because I was always wanted to be a part of Colors family.

I remember asking my mom when I was 10 if I was adopted because I didn't look like my brothers and sisters. She said, 'Are you crazy? You think I am gonna go buy another mouth to feed?' So that settled that.

I had a few really bad years in school, just from not fitting in and being bullied. It was kind of brilliant being a military brat, though, because when you're in that kind of situation, you just think, 'I only have to hang on for another year, because then we'll move. It'll be fine if I can just get out of here.'

I want my kids to be curious, to be interested in a lot of things, to be confident, and to feel they belong in any number of situations.

I've moved around so much my whole life, and I've gotten so used to being the Other in situations - the foreigner, the outsider. The first time I've ever felt like there was no separation between me and the other elements was in music.

I think of myself as an Indian comedian, but I've had British and American schooling. I always had this feeling of not fitting in anywhere, of observing situations from the outside.

For me, whenever I would see a lot of 'black films,' I didn't feel represented in it. I didn't feel connected to the characters or the situations or the humor.

I was born in Poland, and then I was six years in France. I returned to Poland, and then, at the age of eight and a half, we came to Germany.

When I was sixteen, I borrowed a copy of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' from the mobile library. Democrats and Republicans were standing for very different principles, and I could see which side was going to represent me.

In the very early Seventies and the very late Sixties, nobody out here was originally from L.A.

The things that people won't totally accept come in all shapes and sizes and forms, and I can relate to that in my own youth.

I didn't go out shooting for anybody in particular because I shot for everybody unparticular. I make records for Muslims, Christians, rock 'n roll kids, skateboard kids.

When I was growing up, skateboarding was big and basketball was big.

When I felt like an outsider, movies made me feel inside my own skill set.

My skin - very Mexican, very Oaxaquenan, and very human, from the color of my land and the diversity of its colors.

I really wasn't heavy in high school. But no one feels right in their own skin, particularly in high school.