Quotes About Belonging

After doing 'Firefly' and moving on, I always wanted to be part of a series again. I love doing films, too, but there's just something special about being part of the team and feeling like you're actually a part of the family, and I always look to re-create that.

The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity; they do not have national spirit… they are just a heap of loose sand…. Other men are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat.

Most white Minnesotans have forgotten that they were strangers here once. Or that they are not native to this land.

Before America, I was not Black. I was not adrift in a sea of White that I constantly had to come to terms with, against which my very humanity is measured--by Whites, Blacks, the world, and even myself. Black exists only because America is White.

I longed for the Confederate flags of the South, because at least the South had clear lines of demarcation and warning. In Minnesota, there were only smiling faces, open classroom doors, and a stinging persistent coldness that let me know that I was in a new, different place that wasn't really welcoming—and that this place was resistant to me calling it home.

I could just stay there, in the place where I was always different. For years...I held myself apart. I will not commit to you. Though I am here, my real life is elsewhere. It was the only stance I knew how to take.

Most people had a history in this region, but not my parents, and my early, defining relationship to my environment was a feeling of being not from here, even though I had never lived in any other place.

Mr. Kingsley was not just gay but an iconoclast, the first such they'd ever encountered. This was what they longed to be themselves, little though they could put into words. They were all children who had previously failed to fit in, or had failed, to the point of acute misery, to feel satisfied, and they had seized on creative impulse in the hope of salvation.

One of the most important times in my life was the first time that I remember seeing my daddy get onstage and play music with a bunch of guys. All of them playing something different at the same time and all becoming one, and me soaking that in at 5 years old and going, 'That's my daddy up there, and he's a part of something.'

Over the years, we settled into American life and embraced it fully. But having come from a different culture, I didn't know the boundaries of American culture. Which is that, as a girl, you didn't play football or soccer at lunch with the boys, and to be cool, you didn't get into math Olympiad.

The dads across the soccer field looked at me as a dad just like them. And I was very grateful.

Nobody ever calls me a soccer-playing writer, even though I play soccer and it's part of who I am.

I envied kids who played soccer and football, but that was not my gig.

We came to a great country like Canada that took us in, which is amazing looking back at it. At that time, I didn't know if I wanted to play soccer or not. I didn't know what I was supposed to do with my life, but once I came to Canada and started watching it on TV, my dad and brother played and watching them play, I wanted to do that too.

Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others.

Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect.

Social acceptance, 'being liked,' has so much power because it holds the feelings of loneliness at bay.

As a 'parisien d'adoption,' I am only semicognizant of where I may fit at any given time into the French social fabric.

Here in North Jersey, our Muslim community is essential to our social fabric.

At every point I am besieged by people who would like me to conform to some social norm of whatever sort of social group they expect me to be a part of. I never have any identification with these social groups.

I was always kind of searching for the right social group in high school and never really felt like I belonged with any one specific clique.

Fashion has a political role insofar as following it can give you the impression to belonging to a certain social group or a private club.

In high school, I made friends with people in every social group. Or at least that's how I perceived it. I thought they liked me. Maybe they didn't!

It's important to have a good social life.