Place In The World Quotes

“It was during that journey to Via Orazio that I began to be made unhappy by my own alienness. I had grown up with those boys, I considered their behavior normal, their violent language was mine. But for six years now I had also been following daily a path that they were completely ignorant of and in the end I had confronted it brilliantly. With them I couldn’t use any of what I learned every day, I had to suppress myself, in some way diminish myself. What I was in school I was there obliged to put aside or use treacherously, to intimidate them. I asked myself what I was doing in that car. They were my friends, of course, my boyfriend was there, we were going to Lila’s wedding celebration. But that very celebration confirmed that Lila, the only person I still felt was essential even though our lives had diverged, no longer belonged to us and, without her, every intermediary between me and those youths, that car racing through the streets, was gone. Why then wasn’t I with Alfonso, with whom I shared both origin and flight? Why, above all, hadn’t I stopped to say to Nino, Stay, come to the reception, tell me when the magazine with my article’s coming out, let’s talk, let’s dig ourselves a cave that can protect us from Pasquale’s driving, from his vulgarity, from the violent tones of Carmela and Enzo, and also—yes, also—of Antonio?”
― Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

“Relinquish the notion of lost opportunity and try on a new reality:
“Where I am is where I’m supposed to be.”
― Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road

“It is a frightful thing to drop out of one's place in the world and never find it again. I try very hard to keep my memory green and thus by sympathy live anew, or if not anew, aright, which is more to the point, much more.”
― Charles Frazier, Varina

“A place in the sun, that's what I am aiming for... and who could ever ask for more?' -Columbine to Pierrot”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbine

“I didn't wave my daisy. I felt small, the way an ant must feel looking up at a field of wildflowers. I was nothing. I was trapped below flowers, buried under them, while girls like Lizzie Lovett danced overhead. That was life. We all have a place.”
― Chelsea Sedoti, The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

“And I will close my eyes and prepare myself so that they can unscrew my head and allow the map to slip into my lacunae. So that I can be filled and braced from the inside and fortified for the voyage. Because without my world inside me I will contract and congeal, more even than I am now, without speech and without actions and without any purchase upon time.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“Every person alive thinks they are the center of the universe, that they are everything, when in fact each of us is less than nothing.”
― Eleanor Morse, White Dog Fell from the Sky

“Bellamy found simply living a task of amazing difficulty. It was as if ordinary human life were a mobile machine full of holes, crannies, spaces, apertures, fissures, cavities, lairs, into one of which Bellamy was required to (and indeed desired to) fit himself. The machine moved slowly, resembling a train, or sometimes a merry-go-round. But as soon as Bellamy got on (or got in), the machine would soon eject him, sending him spinning back to a place where he was once more forced to be a spectator. Perhaps, that was in some mysterious sense his place, his destiny. But Bellamy did not want to be a spectator, nor could he (having no money of his own) afford to be one. Moreover he had never really mastered the art, apparently so simple for others, of passing the time. His failure to find a métier, to find a task which was his task, caused him continuous anxiety, nor did it occur to him to emulate the majority of mankind who positively resigned themselves, seeing no alternative, to alien and unsatisfying work. At one time he had suffered from depression, and was nearer to despair than his friends realised.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“As the Minotaur walks to his car Buddy charges the fence, snorting, slobbering and barking maniacally. The Minotaur is no longer afraid of Buddy, and he knows the dog means no real harm. But they have an unspoken understanding. Each of them has a history; each clings to an image, however diminished, of himself and his place in the world.”
― Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

“Absently, she wondered if finding one’s place in the world always felt like this, as if an audible click could be heard”
― Melissa Marr, Graveminder

“Whatever. There is a natural order to things, a hierarchy. And no less so in man. For man may be the master of nature, but he is also part of it. Every living thing, from the greatest of all men to the lowliest earthworm has its place. It is very important that the groundhog not think he is tiger, nor a sparrow believe he is a hawk. A frog would not make a very good shark, would it? One must know their place in the world" ~ Baroness von Berge, Greta Greaves of Austria”
― Austin Scott Collins, Crass Casualty (The Victoria da Vinci novels)

“The world was different at the top of the maple tree, for from far up in its lofty branches I was no longer part of everything that was running pell-mell below me. And I discovered that it was in taking myself out of the world that I finally began the process of understanding my place in the world.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“She asks the yard a question it can never answer. 'What is it about me that I can’t find my proper place on this earth?”
― Shawn P. McCarthy

“When we feel the pangs of jealousy, or feel threatened in some way by other people’s talents or presence, we can remind ourselves that everyone has their place. Other people having a place does not detract from us having our place.”
― Donna Goddard, Love's Longing

“It's not where you live, it's how you live.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“First, find your place in the sun, and then avoid sunstroke.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“There is a place for everything and everyone has their place.”
― Clifford Thurlow

“As I walked the streets of my birth, there was no sense of terroir, of groundedness. I didn't belong here more than I belonged anywhere else.”
― Heidi Heilig, The Girl from Everywhere