Quotes About Belonging

Listen, and you will realize that we are made not from cells or from atoms. We are made from stories.

She told me that after a lifetime "in service"—living in other people's houses, taking care of other people's things, and making no judgments—when the time came for her to buy a couch, or a lamp, or dishes, she discovered that she had no tastes or preferences.

Home is where you make it."

Unless we can trace our lineage to the original humans and find that we live where they lived, we are all international migrants. Furthermore we are all wanderers. We symbolically carry our homes on our backs, like turtles, snails, and crustaceans -- for the meaning and associations of home are always with us and affect our orientation in space and time, and how we negotiate our way through the world.

by insisting on repatriation, the Rastafarian is liable to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

repatriation should "start in the minds and hearts of our people; in our words, actions and deeds we must go back to Africa. We may never set foot on the continent in our time, but we can live and represent our heritage each day we live in the world

Must someone be in some sense a member of a human community, trained in its practices and beholden to its norms, in order to have a "self"? Responses to this issue have divided scholars into the individualist school and the collectivist school.

When a person is given up for adoption or when a parent is nonexistent in the raising of the child, not only does the child suffer from the void, the family they were supposed to be part of has a gaping hole.

He did not belong to the Indians. He did not belong to the whites. And it was not time for him to belong to the stars. He belonged right where he was. He belonged nowhere.

He did not belong to the Indians. He did not belong to the whites. And it was not time for him to belong to the stars. He belonged right where he was now. He belonged nowhere.

I am delighted to be back home in Galway, the place I first came to as a 19-year-old in 1960. It's here where my heart is and will forever be.

It is very hard. Man longs for a permanent home. But he does not know it until it is torn away from him.

I mean the breaking of continuity. When you lose your place in the stream of time, you become a person who is completely dependent on the social.

People don't always understand a lack of patriotism

In the schoolyard they had begun to gravitate toward each other, as outcasts will if they have not yet been taught to despise themselves.

It's impossible to lose that which does not belong to you.

I'm an Englishman, after all

Without somebody to watch me, laugh at my jokes, tell me what to do, ask me questions, race me to the river, make me guess the names of birds, or challenge me to count the silvery fish in a school, there was nothing for me to do. Without somebody to be somebody to, it was as though I wasn't somebody myself.

And right then, I come the closest I think I ever will to understanding why Knight left. He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him. He was never happy in his youth -- not in high school, not with a job, not being around other people. It made him feel constantly nervous. There was no place for him, and instead of suffering further, he escaped. It wasn't so much a protest as a quest; he was like a refugee from the human race. The forest offered him shelter (p 182)

If you're born a human oddity, says the introductory chapter of Very Special People, every day of your life, starting in infancy, you are made aware that you are not as others are. When you get older, it continues, things are likely to get worse. You may hide from the world, advises the book, to avoid the punishment it inflicts on those who differ from the rest in mind or body.

Society For The Promotion Of Elfish Welfare

He's not just a dog, he's a member of the family

No man is an island entire to himself

You're not normal!" she hissed. Then she gathered her garments and ran off into the night. Nouri lay back and looked up at the stars. He did not know what it meant to be normal. He only knew what it meant to be Nouri. Who had four ears. And was far from home. And was trying to find his way back to God. So he rose from the bench and made his way to his room, where he finally gave over to his crushing fatigue.