Quotes About Belonging

Midian is where the monsters go.

Our lives are scattered throughout with periods of unbelonging; in childhood, of course, and adolescence; but in adulthood too, when sudden loss (or gain) forces us to reassess things we believe immutable.

There's nothing special about you,' said the man. 'There's nothing special about any of us.' His gesture embraced them all: prisoners, guards, foremen.

Shawnees moved so often and dispersed so widely that they sometimes seemed like a people without a homeland of their own.

In the biracial world constructed in nineteenth-century North America, people had to choose sides; more often the choice was made for them.

For the Outsider, the world into which he has been born is always a world without values.. Unless he can evolve a set of values that will correspond to his own higher intensity of purpose, he may as well throw himself under a bus.

It is fruitless to search for the characteristics of an "American" identity, because each nation has its own notion of what being American should mean.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

Elwood saw that he was always simultaneously at home in whatever scene he found himself and also seemed like he shouldn't have been there; inside and above at the same time; a part and apart. Like a tree trunk that falls across a creek—it doesn't belong and then it's never not been there, generating its own ripples in the larger current.

Over time, Elwood saw that he was always simultaneously at home in whatever scene he found himself and also seemed like he shouldn't have been there; inside and above at the same time; a part and apart. Like a tree trunk that falls across a creek—it doesn't belong and then it's never not been there, generating its own ripples in the larger current.

He thought this city was a good place for him because nobody knew him — And he liked the contradiction that the one place that did know him was the one place he didn't want to be.

If the correct things belonged to you, perhaps you might belong.

According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses. A paradox to the outside, but it never occurred to us that there was anything strange about it. It was simply who we were.

As before, home was a beloved barricade. When school, work, the many-headed beast of strangers and villains comprising the world threatened to destroy, home remained, family remained, and the locks would hold, the lullabies would ward off all bogeymen. He was trapped in this house and he couldn't think of where else he'd rather be.

I'm here because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else, but I don't know about you.

I suppose one finally learns, after much searching, that we really only belong to ourselves.

She had told Jaslyn once that everyone knows where they are from when they know where it is they want to be buried.

It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from. We bring home with us when we leave. Sometimes it becomes more acute for the fact of having left.

Wenn wir gehen, nehmen wir unsere Heimat mit.

In America you could lose everything except the memory of your original name.

She had that emigrant's sadness—she would never go back to her old country—it was gone in more senses than one—but she was forever gazing homewards anyway.

I am German forever, German 'nationalist'. The nazis are un-German.

We came to meadows full of flowers. We saw and realized that they were there, but we had no feelings about them. The first spark of joy came when we saw a rooster with a tail of multicolored feathers. But it remained only a spark; we did not yet belong to this world.

It was, therefore, in an attempt to save one's own skin that one literally tried to submerge into the crowd.