Rootless Quotes

“I wished I was old. I was tired of being so young, so stupidly knowing, so stupidly forgetful. I was tired of having to be anything at all. I felt like the Internet, full of every kind of information but none of it mattering more than any of it, and all of its little links like thin white roots on a broken plant dug out of the soil, lying drying on its side. And whenever I tried to access myself, whenever I'd try to click on me, try to go any deeper than a single fast-loading page on Facebook or MySpace, it was as if I knew that one morning I'd wake up and try to log on to find that not even that version of I existed any more, because the servers all over the world were all down. And that's how rootless. And that's how fragile.”
― Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy

“A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless... speciesless.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“I felt naked beneath the wildness of her eyes. I felt alive. Unknown. And I knew then that the world contained so many things I would never understand.”
― Chris Howard, Rootless

“The very concept of home has become tarnished, misty, elusive. As never before, we are living in a rootless age. So many of us are refugees, living out of suitcases, car trunks, cardboard boxes, desperate to go back to a home that no longer exists.”
― Chris Atack, The Hunger Star: Volume 2, The Wolfe Files

“I knew it was a day of endings, one way or another.”
― Chris Howard, Rootless

“I gripped against her like she was metal and I was all full of lightning, charged up and jagged and of that moment alone.”
― Chris Howard, Rootless

“You take what you can get, I reckon. You take what you can get.”
― Chris Howard, Rootless

“Hvad var iveien med Edevart? Hans hænder var store og stærke, hans sener i orden, men hans sind var splittet. Her seilte han væk tom og hjemløs, han var litt isenn blit fra intet sted, hvorhelst han flakket om drog han røtterne efter sig.”
― Knut Hamsun, Wayfarers

“Norge er ikke noe godt land å ha til fedreland, navnlig ikke om vinteren.”
― Henrik Ibsen

“She never saw it again. Day and night the river flows down into England, day after day the sun retreats into the Welsh mountains, and the tower chimes: 'See the Conquering Hero.' But the Wilcoxes have no part in the place, nor in any place. It is not their names that recur in the parish register. It is not their ghosts that sigh among the alders at evening. They have swept into the valley and swept out of it, leaving a little dust and a little money behind.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“- Lei non è di quella zona? - gli chiese il fotografo che viaggiava con lui.
- Sì, - rispose.
Tuttavia non telefonò ai suoi. Junpei prese l'aereo e ritornò a Tokyo e alla sua solita routine. Non accendeva la televisione e non apriva i giornali. Quando si parlava di terremoto, taceva. Era un'eco da un passato morto e lontano. Dopo la laurea non aveva mai più messo piede in quella città. Ma ciononostante le immagini di quel paesaggio in rovina avevano riaperto in lui ferite nascoste. Sembrava che quel disastro immane, fatale, stesse modificando impercettibilmente ma inesorabilmente diversi aspetti della sua vita. Provava un profondo senso di solitudine, mai avvertito prima.
Non ho nessuna radice, pensava, non sono legato a nulla.”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“and home isn't here
and home isn't there”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“The little prince crossed the dessert and met with only one flower....
“Where are the men?” the little prince asked politely.
The flower has once seen a caravan passing. "Men? she echoed. "I think there are six or seven of them in existence. I saw them, several years ago. But one never knows where to find them. The wind blows them away. They have no roots, and that makes their life very difficult.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry