467 Quotes About Belonging

Sever all ties. The words in his mouth like ash. It was not the coldness of the words that horrified him, their utter opposition to anything human, but rather his own affinity for them, the way he was drawn to this vision of solitude with a feeling almost of nostalgia. He had the kind of loneliness that battles everything, that makes a person strange forever.

Deep down in my heart I knowHow much it’s hard for me to belongEither to someone Or to somewhere.Because it has always been there in my heart; the desire to make a world of my own out of everyone I meet or everyplace I go.And maybe that’s why it has never worked out for me to belong To any place or to any other person in the whole world But myself …

The beauty of being human is the capacity and desire for intimacy. Yet we know that even those who are most intimate remain strange to us. Like children, we often “make strange” with each other.

If I exist, then surely there must be someone else out there like me.

Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose.

You feel more like home to me than any place I've ever been.

I think we belong to each other.

Mother was anchor. Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land.

But I had learned that identity is prismatic, that belonging requires claiming.