Living Abroad Quotes

“Twelve thousand miles of it, to the other side of the world. And whether they came home again or not, they would belong neither here, nor there, for they would have lived on two continents and sampled two different ways of life.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds

“Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“Oh, but once one has returned to the land of one's birth – there is no place more constricting – one's surroundings no longer permit such freedom, and one can no longer simply transcend the demands of social position.”
― Kafū Nagai, Three Japanese Short Stories

“Studying in a developing/third-world country is way more intense and formative than studying in a first-world fancy country. It makes you so much more open-minded, adaptive, and confident. You become so much more real. When you have to shit on two little bricks into a hole the size of a tennis ball at an elementary school in the countryside, or sleep in a farmer's yurt after not bathing for five days, you become a much more easygoing person. It teaches you to value experience over material things real fast.”
― Ali Wong, Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life

“The face of self-pity was universally understood.”
― Vann Chow

“One part of me is happy only in America, the other only in Europe.
Without Americans, I would be very much at home in my country.”
― Henry Miller

“To be in another country, speaking another language, was to be another person, and in being another person I felt for the first time that I was myself.”
― Graeme Macrae Burnet, Case Study

“Home becomes both memory and ache when you live abroad. Sometimes, it visits you in the smell of rice. Sometimes, in the silence after a call ends.”
― AJ GABRIEL, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DREAM: Stories of Grief, Faith, and Silent Strength from an OFW Nurse

“There was a phase of my life when I would wake up and not know where I would be at the end of the day. I was alone and I kept on moving from place to place. Living alone in a different country, I felt uprooted and without any support. But somehow I managed to keep going, and I kept on going amidst strangers. Each day was a struggle. I felt like giving up and going back to my family. But Man is not made to accept defeat.”
― Avijeet Das