Quotes About Belonging

Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home any more. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home. [...] Beautiful logic, I said. You mean I have a home to go to as long as I don't go there? He laughed. Well, isn't it true? You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

I understood why Giovanni had wanted me and had brought me to his last retreat. I was to destroy this room and give to Giovanni a new and better life. This life could only be my own, which, in order to transform Giovanni's, must first become a part of Giovanni's room.

He made me think of home—perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home.

Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him--he may be forced to--but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally, the life of a writer depends.

The world had prepared no place for you, and if the world had its way, no place would ever exist. Now, this is true for everyone, but, in the case of a Negro, this truth is absolutely naked: if he deludes himself about it, he will die. This is not the way this truth presents itself to white men, who believe the world is theirs and who, albeit unconsciously, expect the world to help them in the achievement of their identity.

What it comes to is that if we, who can scarcely be considered a white nation, persist in thinking of ourselves as one, we condemn ourselves, with the truly white nations, to sterility and decay, whereas if we could accept ourselves as we are, we might bring new life to the Western achievements, and transform them.

It is easy for an African to hate the invader and drive him out of Africa, but it is very difficult for an American Negro to do this. He obviously can't do this to white people; there's no place to drive them. This is a country that belongs equally to us both. One has got to live together here or else there won't be any country.

Well isn't it true? You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you can never go back.' 'I seem', I said, 'to have heard this song before.' 'Ah, yes', said Giovanni, 'and you will certainly hear it again. It is one of those songs that somebody, somewhere, will always be singing.

Perhaps it now occurs to him that in this need to establish himself in his relation to his past [the African American] is most American, that this depthless alienation from oneself and one's people is, in sum, the American experience.

The romance of treason never occurred to us for the brutally simple reason that you can't betray a country you don't have. (Think about it).

In the first place, as the homeless wanderers of the twentieth century prove, the question of nationality no longer necessarily involves the question of allegiance. Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.

It is very frightening to belong to somebody.

Yes, it does indeed mean something—something unspeakable—to be born, in a white country, an Anglo-Teutonic, antisexual country, black. You very soon, without knowing it, give up all hope of communion. Black people, mainly, look down or look up but do not look at each other, not at you, and white people, mainly, look away.

For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.

You mean I have a home to go to as long as I don't go there?" He laughed. "Well, isn't it true? You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back." "I seem," I said, "to have heard this song before." "Ah, yes," said Giovanni, "and you will certainly hear it again. It is one of those songs that somebody somewhere will always be singing.

You will go home and then you will find that home is not home any more. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can think: One day I will go home.

Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him - he may be forced to - but nothing will efface his origins, the mark of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station.

Ca ne manque, les chambres. The work is full of rooms—big rooms, little rooms, round rooms, square ones, rooms high up, rooms low down—all kinds of rooms! What kind of room do you think Giovanni should be living in? How long do you think it took me to find the room I have? And since when, since when'—he stopped and beat with his forefinger on my chest—'have you so hated the room? Since when? Since yesterday, since always? Dis-moi.

I wanted children. I wanted to be inside again, with the light and safety, with my manhood unquestioned, watching my woman put my children to bed. I wanted the same bed at night and the same arms and I wanted to rise in the morning, knowing where I was. I wanted a woman to be for me a steady ground, like the earth itself, where I could always be renewed.

Well,' she said, 'you may not be a stranger now. But you were once and I'm sure you will be again — many times.

I don't know, I'm just my mother's son. Sometimes that's all that makes the difference between us and them.

Él no era el negro de nadie. Y eso es un crimen en este país de mierda que, según dicen, es libre. Aquí, uno tiene que ser el negro de alguien.

retired into that strong self-pity which was, perhaps, the only thing he had which really belonged to him