Quotes About Belonging

Tom Joad lays it out: ... A fella ain't got a soul of his own - just a little piece of a big soul. The one big soul that belongs to everybody …

How far's the nex' town? I seen forty-two cars a you fellas go by yesterday. Where you all come from? Where all of you goin'? Well, California's a big State. It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat. Whyn't you go back where you come from?

We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours--being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.

Di sera avveniva una cosa strana: le venti famiglie diventavano una famiglia, i figli diventavano figli di tutti. La privazione della casa diventava una privazione comune, e gli anni felici nell'Ovest erano un sogno comune.

An' Grandpa didn' die tonight. He died the minute you took 'im off the place. You sure a that? Pa cried Why, no. Oh he was breathin', Casy went on, but he was dead. He was that place, an' he knowed it.

Now the tents of the late-comers filled the little flat, and those who had the boxcars were old-timers, and in a way aristocrats.

He was a stranger to all the worl,but he was not lonely.

Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to.

He did not want to stand out from his group. He would like to have risen to the top of it and be admired by it; but it would not occur to him to leave it.

I thought that if we had a national character and a national genius, these people, who were beginning to be called Okies, were it.

Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners. And descendants of English, Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish are essentially American

Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? . . . Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!2 Bonhoeffer's question "Who am I?

Nobody belongs to us, except in memory." (Grandparenting [1994])

Nadie nos pertenece, salvo en el recuerdo.

He had thought, he had read, that from shore to shore all America was the same. He wonders, Is it just these people I'm outside or is it all America?

There's a prison there, too, which always makes me feel included.

Genetically, I'm pure Greek. Psychologically, environmentally, culturally, by choice, I'm a member of the black community.

If I wanted to predict your happiness, and I could know only one thing about you, I wouldn't want to know your gender, religion, health, or income. I'd want to know about your social network—about your friends and family, and the strength of your bonds with them.

We belong together in love, in faith and in spirit.

...our stories are who we are, where we begin. They connect us, tearing down walls and shattering isolation. For story is where hope begins.

I am a Christian. He who answers thus has declared everything at once-his country, profession, family; the believer belongs to no city on earth but to the heavenly Jerusalem.

The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe.

I was literally the black sheep of the family, and there were definitely moments of discomfort while my grandmother was working through her racism.

Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units.