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homelands QUOTES

homelands QUOTES

1 " The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools. "

― Marguerite Yourcenar , Memoirs of Hadrian

2 " Someday they would discover that the stars were not sacred, but made from the same material as their bodies. They would learn it was the stars that created their worlds, that worlds created their minds, that minds created tools, and tools could create stars. Growing, sprawling, thriving until they too became masters of their own understanding, chasing enlightenment with the fervor of having nothing to lose, launching from their homelands like fireworks with glorious yellow tails. "

― Jake Vander-Ark , The Day I Wore Purple

3 " 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. "

― Robin Wall Kimmerer , Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

4 " Everyone has a right to love the land that gave them the things they need to live. It gives them beauty to look at, and food to eat, and neighbors to bicker with and then eventually to marry. But I think... that your own devotion to your familiar homeland should inspire you to allow other people to embrace their homelands as beautiful too. "

― Gregory Maguire , Out of Oz (The Wicked Years, #4)

5 " So in the sweltering heat of a July night, I sang a Christmas carol to a room full of fae, who had been driven out of their homelands by Christians and their cold-iron swords. "

― Patricia Briggs , Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson, #2)

6 " We are absolutely right to condemn the suicide bomber's targeting of innocent civilians and mourn his victims. But as we have seen, in war the state also targets such victims; during the 20th century, the rate of civilian deaths rose sharply and now stands at 90 percent. In the West we solemnize the deaths of our regular troops carefully and recurrently honor the memory of the soldier who dies do his country. Yet the civilian deaths we cause are rarely mentioned, and there has been no sustained outcry in the West against them. Suicide bombing shocks us to the core; but should it be more shocking than the deaths of thousands of children in their homelands every every year because of land mines? Or collateral damage in a drone strike? "

― Karen Armstrong