Quotes About Belonging

Non me ne potevo andare perché lontana da questa terra sarei stata come gli alberi che tagliano a Natale, quei poveri pini senza radici che durano un po di tempo e poi muoiono.

There's a certain freshness and innocence in people who have always lived in one place and can count on witnesses to their passage through the world. In contrast, those of us who have moved on many times develop tough skin out of necessity. Since we lack roots or corroboration of who we are, we must put our trust in memory to give continuity to our lives...but memory is always cloudy, we can't trust it.

Patria es donde están nuestros muertos», solía decir Carme.

Someone like him who thought more about himself than he did his community, had no place in the tribe. Individualism was thought to be a form of madness, like being possessed by a demon.

In my case, it's not so much wanting to live in Chile as it is the desire to recapture the certainty I feel there. That's my home ground.

No sólo perdía a Rosa, su madre, los amigos, el trabajo y su pasado. Perdía su patria. —Mi país..., mi país... —sollozó.

Our homeland is where our dead are buried.

but had always felt she was a visitor. She felt disconnected and different everywhere else too, but far from being a problem this gave her a sense of pride, as it added to her view of herself as a distant, mysterious artist vaguely superior to the rest of mortals.

Mapu-ché, «gente de la tierra», así se llaman ellos mismos

Roots are not in landscape or a country, or a people, they are inside you.

I acquired quite a lot of technical skill and got quite a long way with my painting, but I never felt I was doing what New Zealand was about with my paint.

I was born in New Zealand, and I was raised in Australia, and I'm very proud of that.

I'm always going to be a New Zealand fighter. I'm a Kiwi, of course, and I've still got my New Zealand passport.

There are parts of New Zealand that I absolutely fell in love with that I will miss going back to, but I kind of think that is the part that can continue and will continue on. I don't imagine I'll stop going back to New Zealand, because I feel part of the fabric there, really.

We've had a debate about immigration in New Zealand for some time. Now what we're trying to champion in that conversation is a recognition that New Zealand has been built off immigration. I myself am a third-generation New Zealander.

While living in New Zealand, I usually made or found Korean food nearby, so when coming back to Korea it was just like coming back home.

I come more to Scotland than I ever used to, so I feel more connected to it, more part of the zeitgeist. You know when you realize you have a choice and I'm choosing my homeland. It's funny: when you get older these things creep up to you.

In 19 years growing up in Israel I had no Jewish friends. Zero.

Zimbabwe was still a relatively young country when I was living there and its post-apartheid society was only newly formed. Being a mixed-race child in that environment means that you have to think about crafting your own identity and you question why you belong in that world.

I grew up on the coast of England in the '70s. My dad is white from Cornwall, and my mom is black from Zimbabwe. Even the idea of us as a family was challenging to most people.

Being a white southern African who saw the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, the sense of being an outsider was absolutely instilled in my limbic system.

I'm not even sure that I want to go back... The Zimbabwe that I really loved, the Zimbabwe that I grew up in, just isn't there anymore, and I'm not sure about the country that has replaced it.

My dad's from Zimbabwe, and my mom is Danish, Irish, and Norwegian, so I have influences from a lot of different places.

It's clear to me that one can't be Jewish without Israel. Religious or non-religious, Zionist or non-Zionist, Ashkenazi or Sephardic - all these will not exist without Israel.