Quotes About Belonging

Traveling around the country where you grew up , lost some of your virginity and a few of your illusions, acquired some lasting neuroses, and then left in a hateful mood, is a slightly schizoid experience. You are at once an outsider to the present and an insider of the past. Or perhaps the other way round.

I left Bulgaria when I was a seventeen-year-old East European, and I am now, by all appearances, a 32-year-old 'global soul'. But everybody needs a borrowed 'us' from time to time, even a global soul. And after half a lifetime and several other countries, the Bulgarian 'us' is still the only honest one I have.

I managed to convince myself that I'd left Bulgaria behind for good. I chose to see emigration and globe-trotting as an escape, not as a loss. Nowhere to call home? No problem, the world is my oyster. Where are you from? they ask. Does it matter? I answer. But it does.

It's precisely when you have lost your roots that everywhere you go matters hugely.

the most beautiful thing about tango is that it doesn't belong to anyone. It doesn't, but we'd like it to. We'd like to own it, each of us individually. We are all fiercely territorial about it. By being here despite the pain of it, we're saying: I'm holding my ground...

Right now, my deep suspicion is that it's possible, perhaps even inevitable, to live between – no, among – nationalities. It's a bit like wearing different suits, all of them the wrong size, all of them slightly ridiculous, either too baggy or too tight. They don't make the right size anymore, it's been discontinued.

Being without one's family is the worst poverty

The destiny of the Latino community is interwoven with the destiny of the United States.

We need to have intimate, enduring bonds; we need to be able to confide; we need to feel that we belong; we need to be able to get support, and just as important for happiness, to give support. We need many kinds of relationships; for one thing, we need friends.

That weird dark energy - when I was a kid, I didn't know what it was. I just had to 'thrash it out,' as my mother called it. I became quite intolerable, creatively and artistically, with other people. I wanted nothing more than to be part of a group, and yet I couldn't help alienating people.

I think growing up, I didn't ever attempt to define my Koreanness. It was just this intrinsic part of me.

Todd introduced me to the world I always dreamed of being a part of.

I find myself frequently introducing myself to someone, saying that, you know, I've grown up black and biracial in the United States.

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

Gender and sex are about rules which we have invented, but we are animals; we belong to nature.

I can't imagine how hard it must be to invest in a community... when you don't feel heard and when you don't feel seen.

Playgrounds are like microcosms of the world, aren't they? So you look around and you go, 'This is the world, is it? It doesn't work for me. I'm not the beautiful one, I'm not the popular one, I'm not the funny one. There are all these types and I'm not any of them.' And when you're not any of them, you're sort of invisible.

People who have seen me read usually come up afterwards and invite me to be a part of something.

People like space. But they sometimes have been left out. People are much more open to that if you invite them in.

I was in a really crummy pop-punk band. I think we did a whole bunch of Blink-182 covers, and we were on the fringe of losers and jocks. So we invited all the cool kids to come watch us play in our bass player's brother's bedroom. And it was terrible, but everyone thought we were so cool.

I've never even been invited to the GLAAD awards, to sit in the audience. I don't necessarily care, and I'm sure they will one day, and it will be fine, but I've never been invited to anything like that.

The first time I worked with Usher, I learned that I belonged in the room. You know the first time you get invited into a room you have never been in and you almost feel like you lied your way in? The second time, you don't feel like you lied your way in.

I remember the first time that I realized that being black meant that I wasn't allowed certain things. It was in the fourth grade, and it was who I thought was my best friend not inviting me to his birthday party because I would be the only black kid there. It was the first time I ever felt restricted, and it certainly wasn't the last time.

So many of my films involve houses or homes that have been abandoned. People trying to get back home. That's an idea that I keep dealing with.