“Children, language, lands: almost everything was stripped away, stolen when you weren’t looking because you were trying to stay alive. In the face of such loss, one thing our people could not surrender was the meaning of land. In the settler mind, land was property, real estate, capital, or natural resources. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold. These are the meanings people took with them when they were forced from their ancient homelands to new places.”
“Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin.”
“For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.”
“Thomas Jefferson asked himself “In what country on earth would you rather live ” He first answered “Certainly in my own where are all my friends my relations and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life.” But he continued “which would be your second choice ” His answer “France.”
“There is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home.”
“Home was not a perfect place. But it was the only home they had and they could hope to make it better.”
“كيف يمكن ألا يستطيع الإنسان أن يسير إلى ملكه الخاص؟ أن يزور قبر زوجته؟ أن يأكل ثمار أربعين جيلاً من كدح أسلافه من دون أن يعاقب بالموت رمياً بالرصاص؟ على نحو ما، لم يكن هذا السؤال الفجّ القاسي قد نفذ سابقاً إلي وعي اللاجئين الذين شوشتهم أبدية الانتظار، معلقين آمالهم على قرارات دولية نظرية”
“There wasn t a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of important things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home.”
“Body is a home, a prison and a grave.”
“The first thing I did when I got inside was turn on the kitchen light. Then I moved to the table, putting my dad s iPod on the speaker dock, and a Bob Dylan song came on, the notes familiar. I went into the living room, hitting the switch there, then down the hallway to my room, where I did the same. It was amazing what a little noise and brightness could do to a house and a life, how much the smallest bit of each could change everything. After all these years of just passing through, I was beginning to finally feel at home.”
“Home for me is not where I am. Home for me is a physical structure where the girl whom I love is sheltered and protected from the incoming storms of life. Home for me is not where I am safe, but where she is safe. Home for me is not where she exists, but where she lives. She is my home.”
“Satyrs aren t dryads, but we have roots, too. Camp Half Blood is mine.”
“The reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone else out. A home has a perimeter. But sometimes our perimeter was breached by neighbors, by Girl Scouts, by Jehovah’s Witnesses. I never liked to hear the doorbell ring. None of the people I liked ever turned up that way.”
“I believe home is where the heart can be open and loving with a sense of security. It must not be a place of fear.”
“I don t really care if people forget me. My legacy wasn t about me. It was about everything I could do for another. When that sinks in...well you try a little harder. You dream a little broader. Your heart stretches a little farther and you find that you can t go back to the same place and make it fit. You become a person of ideas and seek out your own kind. And then it happens: One day you discover that staying the same is scary and changing has become your new home.”
“The city was lovely. There could be no place in the world to which he belonged so completely. That was why he d always dreamed of leaving, and why he d always been so afraid to go.”
“There was not an inch of solid ground anywhere in the world for me to call my own. I didn t belong anywhere. Had I disappeared, no one would have noticed.”