Quotes About Belonging

Daha çok, ayd?n?n fazladan bir adam, orta s?n?flar?n baÅŸar?s?z bir ürünü, kusurlar? dolay?s?yla ayr?cal?ks?z s?n?flar?n k?y?s?nda yaÅŸayan ve onlara hiçbir zaman kat?lamayan biri olduÄŸunu söyleyemez miyiz?

Me dan ganas de marcharme, de irme a cualquier parte donde estuviera realmente en mi lugar, donde me encerraría... Pero mi lugar no se halla en ninguna parte; estoy de más.

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds home for us everywhere.

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know, that's obeah too.

I've always tried to make a home for myself, but I have not felt at home in myself. I've worked hard at being the hero of my own life. But every time I checked the register of displaced persons, I was still on it. I didn't know how to belong. Longing? Yes. Belonging? No.

Don't lie. You know you like to view but not to buy. I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first. And that is the stubbornness in me: I do not want to be someone's little home.

Where you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.

Loneliness isn't about being by yourself. That's fine, right and good, desirable in many ways. Loneliness is about finding a landing-place, or not, and knowing that, whatever you do, you can go back there. The opposite of loneliness isn't company, it's return. A place to return.

You cannot disown what is yours. Flung out, there is always the return, the reckoning, the revenge, perhaps the reconciliation. There is always the return. And the wound will take you there.

Can I? Can I speak my mind or am I dumb inside a borrowed language, captive of bastard thoughts? What of me is mine?

The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story – of course that is how we all live, it's the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It's like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It's like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you – and it can't, and it shouldn't, because something is missing.

When you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.

You were loved then and you are loved now. Isn't that enough?

I guess I'm afraid of not being like other people. No, that's not true. I'm not afraid of not being like other people. I'm afraid I won't find anybody who doesn't mind me not being like other people. I'm not ambitious for money or power. I want to find some real way to live.

I never wanted to find my birth parents - if one set of parents felt like a misfortune, two sets would be self-destructive... I had no idea that you could like your parents or that they could love you enough to let you be yourself.

All of one's life is a struggle towards that; the narrow path between freedom and belonging. I have sometimes sacrificed freedom in order to belong, but more often I have given up all hope of belonging.

I have sometimes sacrificed freedom in order to belong, but more often I have given up all hope of belonging.

Donde naces — en lo que naces, el lugar, la historia del lugar, cómo esa historia se imbrica con la tuya— deja una impronta en quién eres, por mucho que digan los expertos en globalización.

Los niños adoptados nos autoinventamos porque no tenemos otra salida; hay una ausencia, un vacío, un signo de interrogación justo al principio de nuestras vidas. Una parte crucial se ha ido, y de forma violenta, como una bomba en el útero materno.

I go to the bathroom. All my life I have been an orphan and an only child. Now I come from a big noisy family who go ballroom dancing and live forever.

You act out what it feels like to be the one who doesn't belong. And you act it out by trying to do to others what has been done to you. It is impossible to believe that anyone loves you for yourself.

I have found that I am not a space where people want to live. At least not without decorating first.

Here I am. Not leaving any more. Home.