Quotes About Community

There is much more to being a patriot and a citizen than reciting the pledge or raising a flag.

All moms need confidants who are in their shoes and can relate to what they're going through. You need a night out together to be who you are, and not feel like you have to be the career woman, wife and mommy--all at once. After all, we're not superwomen.

Some call them "homeless." The new nomads reject that label. Equipped with both shelter and transportation, they've adopted a new word. They refer to themselves, quite simply, as "houseless

the Amazon encampments began to seem more and more like microcosms of a national catastrophe.

Introverts Unite: We're Here, We're Uncomfortable, and We Want to Go Home,

401(k)s were part of a larger cultural drift in America away from shared responsibilities toward a more precarious individualism.

people not only buck up in times of crisis, but do so with a "startling, sharp joy." It's possible to undergo hardships that shake our will to endure, while also finding happiness in shared moments, such as sitting around a bonfire with fellow workampers under a vast starry sky.

Sameer and LaVonne were not naive. They know that, in the eyes of the law, they are homeless. But who can live under the weight of that word? The term "homeless" has metastasized beyond its literal definition, becoming a terrible threat. It whispers: Exiles. The Fallen. The Other. Those Who Have Nothing Left. "Our society's untouchables," LaVonne suggested on her blog.

Bleary-eyed, they find places to pull off the road and rest. In Walmart parking lots. On quiet suburban streets. At truck stops, amid the lullaby of idling engines. Then in the early morning hours—before anyone notices—they're back on the highway. Driving on, they're secure in this knowledge: The last free place in America is a parking spot.

In many ways we modern day vandwellers are just like the Mountain Men of old: We need to be alone and on the move, but we equally need to occasionally gather together and make connections with like-minded people who understand us.

When Swankie arrived at an RTR session wearing a T-shirt that said "Introverts Unite: We're Here, We're Uncomfortable, and We Want to Go Home," she got smiles and nods of acknowledgment all day.

income-segregated neighborhoods are on the rise, isolating—and insulating—the wealthy from the poor. Quartzsite

One guy at a Rubber Tramp Rendezvous campfire was horrified to learn I hadn't yet read Travels with Charley; the next day he arrived at the van to lend me a paperback. Other entries in the literary canon of this subculture included Blue Highways by William Least Heat- Moon, Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

One of them, FreeCampsites.net, logged idyllic places in nature where visitors could stay for free, from small city parks to sprawling national forests.

a glimpse of utopia.

There are three things you can never have enough of in life, Lieutenant: chocolate, friends and the theatre.

The problem arises, Rufus, when creative people gather together. That's when pornography, orgies, drunken rumbles, and the like occur, when they have nothing to do but indulge in those things.

We don't have many murders here in Cabot Cove.

Don't say Fili, sister. Say Pili. In Tagalog, pili means to choose. Pino means fine. Pilipino equals 'fine choice.

You are who you are. Don't be ashamed of yourself. At all. Surround yourself with people who cheer you on.

This music had been played and heard before and would be again, not only here in this church, but in places all over the world, by people living in different circumstances and different times.

You are not alone, she thought. Don't be afraid. You are beloved.

The Casa Hogar Elim orphanage was about a dozen miles from the Texas border town of Laredo and a world away for us kids from church youth group. There were about a hundred of us that first time I went. On the bus from the airport in San Antonio, we leafed through magazines, showing each other a Ford Mustang convertible we had to have and the red, white, and blue Tommy Hilfiger ad for the white polo that was different from every polo we already had because this one was Tommy Hilfiger.

With the same fervor that my mom now flips houses, my parents fixed people throughout my childhood. We took in people who were sick or neglected, and it wasn't always fun. Sometimes it was a chore to share my parents with others. Our family time was always with others, whether they were there physically or talked about in our prayers. "To whom much is given, much is expected," was what I heard. I understood, but sometimes I didn't feel we had much to share.