Quotes About Belonging

What people don't understand is joining a gang ain't bad, it's cool, it's fine. When you in the hood, joining a gang it's cool because all your friends are in the gang, all your family's in the gang. We're not just killing people every night, we're just hanging out, having a good time.

It's easy to feel like you don't have any control over yourself or your life or your body as a teen - everything is changing so fast, and a lot of it feels so outside of your power. I think that's why a lot of teens form really strong attachments to fictional characters or celebrities, draw their own characters or write themselves into fan fiction.

The homeland affects you directly: it affects your body; it affects the collective mind and the collective heart and the collective spirit.

I think people tend to see the bigger point, which is maybe not fitting in and feeling like you didn't have the childhood that you expected you would have, or that you felt lonely or struggled with drugs and alcohol or just that you were able to achieve your dreams.

There was never a book, a magazine, a movie, a television show that spoke to my experience as a bicultural teen. I could find a million articles on finding the perfect prom dress or getting the guy of your dreams, but how about 'Ten Sure Fire Steps to Being the Perfect Korean Daughter and Not Be a Freak at Your High School?'

Music, Rock and Roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have their own music, I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own generation.

We should wake up and tell ourselves: You're not a xenophobe, you're not a racist, you're not a crazy guy if you say, 'My culture is better than yours.'

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.

It makes you feel like the pool is yours when you have your family there. You walk up to them and see them crying... and you know they are proud of you.

My parents told me from the time I can remember that, 'Yeah, you're adopted. But this is your family.' I can remember my mom, she tells me this story: when I was little, I was looking at her, and I was like, 'Why isn't my skin the same color as yours?' She was like, 'Oh, you're adopted, but I wish I had pretty brown skin like you.'

You look at guys on the court, man. You got this guy with this brand of shoe, and this guy with this brand - they're just wearing the shoe. But it's a whole different feeling when you got a shoe on, and it's yours.

As a white Australian, you're surrounded by this vast landscape you know isn't yours, so you're always intimidated. You expect to vanish up a mountain or get eaten by the ground.

Some writing programs are very much like, you come in, and you have a niche that becomes yours, and, you know, you're the dude from the streets. Or you're the woman who was in prison.

Greatness is not guarding yourself from the people; greatness is being accepted by the people.

Always be your true self, and surround yourself with positive and supportive people.

Be true to yourself and surround yourself with positive, supportive people.

Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.

It's fun, and a laugh for you... you can boo me and feel happy about yourself because you're part of the crowd that did that. But deep down there were people in that crowd booing me because of my Aboriginality.

There is something inherently valuable about being a misfit. It's not to say that every person who has artistic talent was a social outcast, but there is definitely a value for identifying yourself differently and being proud that you are different.

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

When I was a youth, to be called 'African' was a diss. At school, the African kids used to lie and say they were Jamaican. So when I first came in the game, and I'm saying lyrics like, 'I make Nigerians proud of their tribal scars/ My bars make you push up your chest like bras,' that was a big deal for me.

Being a good host offsets the deprivation and loneliness of my youth.

I was the only white kid in my neighborhood for most of my youth even in high school, so reverse racism was just as apparent as racism.