#belonging

She was still hugging the cat. "Poor slob," she said, tickling his head, "poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't any right to give him one: he'll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I. I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like." She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. "It's like Tiffany's," she said. [...] It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name. ↗

— Truman Capote

#home #life

These hands," he squeezed them both on my face to make his point, "will never touch you without being gentle. Unless that's not what you want, of course." His eyebrow lifted waiting for me to balk, but I just waited. "These arms will never hold you back, but I'll hold you as tight as you'll let me. I can't wait for you to be all mine. You belong to me in every way, Maggie. Mine." I nodded in his hands. He leaned closer and whispered, "Say it." I didn't wait a beat. "I belong to you." And he belonged to me. He grinned. "You're daggum right you do. ↗

— Shelly Crane

#gentleness #love #love

Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#attachment #belonging #home #homelessness #roots

Sometimes you have to wander around until you find where you really belong. And sometimes it's right where you started. ↗

— Rachel Gibson

#gospel

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. ↗

— Aldo Leopold

#because #begin #belong #belonging #commodity

I realized that my truest passion was for helping people change through faith in a higher power. That meant, for me, belonging to the church. Using my abilities to bring Christian doctrine to a postmodern world. ↗

— James McGreevey

#bring #change #christian #church #doctrine

Before I took the veil, I was ornamented for the ceremony, and was clothed in a rich dress belonging to the Convent, which was used on such occasions; and placed not far from the altar in the chapel, in the view of a number of spectators who had assembled, perhaps about forty. ↗

— Maria Monk

#altar #assembled #before #belonging #ceremony

I had friends at school, but I was never part of a gang and I dreamed of that sense of belonging to a group. You know, where people would call me 'Em' and shout across the bar, 'Em, what are you drinking?' after the show. ↗

— Emily Mortimer

#after #bar #belonging #call #dreamed

We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs. ↗

— Richard Powers

#ever #grabs #live #others #racism

I think I had a shyness about me, I think I discovered acting as a way to break out of that and as a way of belonging, a sense of being special. ↗

— Michael C. Hall

#acting #being #belonging #break #discovered