Quotes About Belonging

I'm from the middle of nowhere. I had to drive four hours just to find a city. It's a different upbringing. It was perfect for me. I love the small-town feel, where you know everybody.

My upbringing has given me sympathy for the idea of isolation and what it is to be a new person in the room, where everyone else has some amount of familiarity and comfort.

I didn't really have a religious upbringing in my life, which was tough at times because I was searching for some kind of meaning, but it also gave me an avenue to find my own sense of connection.

There was a stage when I was a little embarrassed about my Asian upbringing.

There's a particular quality that those of us who live on the border share; we can switch from being Mexican to being American in an instant just by scanning our surroundings. Not everybody has this superpower; it takes a very specific kind of upbringing to instill a deep pride in two very different cultures.

I feel very American, but my upbringing was quite the opposite.

The feeling of being an underdog, not belonging, is very much me. You harbour a little feeling of resentment towards the 'upper dog'.

I grew up on the north side of Chicago, in West Rogers Park, an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. When I was 13, my parents moved to Winnetka, Illinois, an upper class, WASPy suburb where Jews - as well as Blacks and Catholics - were unwelcome on many blocks. I suffered the spiritual equivalent of whiplash.

I consider myself an Upper East Sider, but I may have to reconsider. While I was away, everyone seemed to flee!

When I was in college, I lived in a mostly black, poor neighborhood. That's where I grew up, but I attended a mostly white upper-class school in conservative Mississippi. I was often very aware of how I presented myself.

I remember when I first got into the England side, going to meet ups where you were just doing a job, you were almost looking to go back to your clubs as soon as you arrived. That changed. The Lionesses got the feel of a club; it was a place you wanted to be, a set-up you couldn't wait to join.

I was really upset because I was branded as an enemy alien when I'm an American.

The thing that upsets me the most is the entitlement of people that will stand with a flag and say to some other people that they need to go back to where they came from. When, in fact, they also would need to go back to where they came from, because you need to go all the way back to the beginning.

When I went to Egypt right after 9/11 I was very upset. I used to live in Egypt. I had a lot of friends there. I spent two years teaching there. I had very fond feelings for that part of the world, and the fact that a culture I liked so much had attacked my own culture was really very upsetting to me.

I struggle to understand why many in football get so upset about dual nationality.

I remember I was playing basketball, and an entire arena was, like, chanting 'Big Foot.' It was a high school game, but... you're constantly being reminded you're bigger; you don't look like everybody. There were days where I would be upset, and, like, I'd cry about it.

There's nothing set in stone - some people perceive it as Will could be gay, asexual or whatever. Or, like how I see it, he was stuck in the Upside Down, and he was away for so long that all of his friends started growing up while he was in this other world.

I'm an upstate New York lifer.

The key to empowerment is no more complicated than what Jesse Jackson said, 'We are somebody.' But the 'We are somebody' I would like to be in the larger sense: not just the urban African-American but homo sapiens in general - We are somebody.

We are Christian and Jewish and Muslim and Hindu and none of the above. We are gay and straight. We are black, brown, white, and innumerable combinations. We are young and old, female and male, with and without disabilities, urban and rural, and liberal and conservative. Every one of us is an equal American.

I feel like I don't fit in. There's not a lot of outlets for urban music, for black artists who don't have that crossover thing going early on.

Being master of Urdu doesn't interest me, being part of the global society does, breathing hope into that society matters to me.

I have never deceived anyone, for I have never belonged to anyone. My independence was all my wealth: I have known no other happiness.

There will always be people who challenge the idea that you belong, but it's important to work hard, to focus on yourself, and prove that you belong in this space of high-level athletics.