Quotes About Belonging

Then I took her in my arms and something happened then. I was terribly glad to see her. It really seemed, with Hella in the circle of my arms, that my arms were home and I was welcoming her back there. She fitted in my arms, she always had, and the shock of holding her caused me to feel that my arms had been empty since she had been away.

We're all bastards. That's why we need our friends.

We're all bastards. That's why we need our friends.

Fighting will not make you stay. In French, we have what is called une séparation de corps—not a divorce, you understand, just a separation. Well. We will separate. But I know you belong with me. I believe, I must believe—that you will come back.

You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

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.

Mas não é isso mesmo? Você só passa a ter uma casa quando vai embora dela, e depois, quando foi embora, você nunca mais pode voltar.

To be African American is to be African without any memory and American without any privilege.

This crucial day may be the day on which an Algerian taxi driver tells him how it feels to be an Algerian in Paris. It may be the day on which he passes a café terrace and catches a glimpse of the tense, intelligent and troubled face of Albert Camus.

Just so you know, there's a space that only you can fill. Just so you know, I loved you then, I guess I always will.

I experienced the Church to be this refuge within and beyond myself.

I have six siblings but grew up an only child. I was adopted by my aunt and uncle.

Uncle Fester brought me back with the young group. He was very 'in' with the teens.

I know black kids who don't even know any other black kids except their cousins. And that's enough. You wouldn't look at these kids and say that they are Uncle Toms or self-hating or fleeing or trying to be white, given the culture in which they live, which is very natural to them as kids.

When I heard about the Windrush issue, I thought, 'That could be my mum... it could be my dad... it could be my uncle... it could be me.'

My dad's from Barbados, but I lived with my mum. She brought me up; my uncle took me to the football. I grew up in a white family, I'd say.

In Afghanistan, you don't understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself as a son, a brother, a cousin to somebody, an uncle to somebody. You are part of something bigger than yourself.

Most importantly, I realize the value of the other people - the extended family - the other people within my community, my cultures: my teachers and the other people I call Auntie, Uncle, Godfather, Godbrother, whatever. These are people who pulled you in and made you part of their lives and their homes.

People always tell me that they grew up with me - like I'm their brother or uncle or some other family member. That keeps me going.

You always had a few brothers that was speaking on Islam, like my brother's uncle. It wasn't big in my neighborhood, but with certain brothers, it was big. I respected it because Islam is my home. I found my home when Islam came to me. I've been living with it ever since.

George Harrison became my uncle - not by blood but through love. It's sort of an Indian cultural thing.

I couldn't really tell if it was a different childhood because I was used to it, it was kind of normal to me. The only time I remember it felt a bit odd was when I went to other people's houses and they were calling people 'dad.' I wouldn't get that. But my uncle, who also lived with me, was a father figure.

My identity has always been confused. Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish/Russian/Jewish mother and an English/Irish/Catholic father, there is no form of guilt to which I was not subjected in my childhood. Members of my immediate family live all over the world - a diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles and more in a dizzying mix.

I'm a guy who was born in Cincinnati and whose entire family except for my mother still lives in Cincinnati - my grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, you name it.