Quotes About Belonging

Her knees began to shake, not because he was beautiful, which he had always been, but because coming into this room with him here waiting for her…it was like coming home.

fell in love with my country—its rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, cities and people. . . . It could be a paradise on earth if it belonged to the people, not to a small owning class. —Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

I think there are only two things you can do with your hometown: look for ways to make it better, or look for another place to live.

but in Claire's mind it would always be Holly Golightly who stole her daddy. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us.

Shut up he says teasingly. I know what you're thinking, and that's not why you're here with us We walk for a minute. Why am I? Sabin shrugs. Does there really have to be an answer to that? Sometimes it's just right. You fit. Jesus, kid, can't you feel it? Don't question everything. I smile. I do feel it. Belonging.

Chris may be imperfect, and he makes mistakes, but I can feel his heart, and I know that he is mine.

Her body pressed against his felt like the most natural thing in the world, and the way she fit against him as though they were made for this embrace was overwhelming.

But I do not fit well into any social mold whatsoever. That is not appealing to others.

He had no skills or smarts or education to distinguish him, which made him just the sort to be taken with the notion that he belonged to a master race

I think there is something a little too self conscious about enjoying being an outsider.

When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything: the place, the people, the life, the streets, the life, the sky, the flowers, the sounds. When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. Your breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.

I just wanted to go home, to the language in which I was known, and loved.

Gogol is unaccustomed to this sort of talk at mealtimes, to the indulgent ritual of the lingering meal, and the pleasant aftermath of bottles and crumbs and empty glasses that clutter the table.

Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge—she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind. It was easier to turn her back on the two countries that could claim her in favor of one that had no claim whatsoever.

In a sense, I'm used to a kind of linguistic exile. My mother tongue, Bengali, is foreign in America. When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You speak a secret, unknown language, lacking any correspondence to the environment. An absence that creates a distance within you.

Every language belongs to a specific place. It can migrate, it can spread. But usually it's tied to a geographical territory, a country. Italian

Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.

When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You

She has the gift of accepting her life; as he comes to know her, he realizes that she has never wished she were anyone other than herself, raised in any other place, in any other way.

avevo bisogno di una lingua differente: una lingua che fosse un luogo di affetto e di riflessione. —ANTONIO TABUCCHI

I think it's a hesitant book and at the same time bold. A text both private and public. On the one hand it springs from my other books. The themes, ultimately, are unchanged: identity, alienation, belonging. But the wrapping, the contents, the body and soul are transfigured.

For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy - a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling of sorts...Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.

Those who don't belong to any specific place can't, in fact, return anywhere. The concepts of exile and return imply a point of origin, a homeland. Without a homeland and without a true mother tongue, I wander the world, even at my desk. In the end I realise that it wasn't a true exile: far from it. I am exiled even from the definition of exile.

He has no ABCD friends at college. He avoids them, for they remind him too much of the way his parents choose to live, befriending people not so much because they like them, but because of a past they happen to share.