Quotes About Foreignness

Quem acha doce a terra natal ainda é um tenro principiante; aquele para quem toda a terra é natal já é forte; mas é perfeito aquele para quem o mundo inteiro é um lugar estrangeiro. A alma tenra fixou seu amor num único ponto do mundo; a pessoa forte estendeu o seu amor a todos os lugares; o homem perfeito extinguiu o seu. (Hugo de St. Victor, monge saxão do século XII, citado por Edward Said)

He wants the minute and secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.

She would always believe that he was someone else, that he wasn't himself but some fanciful idea of a foreign person; she would always feel like she was someone special because she had condescended to be with someone everyone else hated. His presence would prove to the world that she was a good person, an educated person, a liberal person.

Here I know nobody; nobody knew me.

A man does like it when a woman tries, especially when she's foreign to him, as his wife had become the moment he'd decided to tell her he was leaving.

To be foreign is to be free. To have a great expanse stretch out before you—the desert, the steppe. To have the shape of the moon behind you like a cradle, the deafening symphony of the cicadas, the air's fragrance of melon peel, the rustle of the scarab beetle when, come evening, the sky turns red, and it ventures out onto the sand to hunt. To have your own history, not for everyone, just your own history written in the tracks you leave behind.

We are all aliens to ourselves.

Thus I purified the priests and Levites from everything foreign, and I assigned specific duties to each of the priests and Levites.