Quotes: Belonging
3 quotes on this theme, each with its source and insight
The quotes
“The place we run toward runs toward us!”
Source: Birds of Caution, 1996 (later editions noted, e.g. 2012) · Check the source
Disputed attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The wording is attributed online to Ibrahim Nasrallah and associated with Birds of Caution, but the evidence comes from reader-submitted quotation pages rather than a verified printed passage.
- What remains uncertain
- No page number, edition or primary-text citation has been located; the quotation is plausibly Nasrallah’s but not independently verified.
The line makes place active: the homeland seems to move toward the person who seeks it. Read against Nasrallah’s Birds of Caution, it reads less like a self-help axiom and more like a poetic claim about memory, exile and the pull of belonging. The syntax turns longing into a lived paradox.
“I’m nothing, I’m everything,’ he declared. ‘The street is my mother. The sun is my father. What more should I ask of life?”
Source: Black Moses (Petit Piment), novel, 2015 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The passage appears in the novel Black Moses (Petit Piment) by Alain Mabanckou; the attribution to him is verified.
- What remains uncertain
- Some online records misassigned the line to The Lights of Pointe‑Noire; no stable page image or pagination for the novel’s edition is provided by the research.
The line packs a paradox: claiming both utter insignificance and total belonging. In Black Moses a character substitutes the street and the sun for family, turning exile and poverty into a fierce, elemental identity. The line comes from Mabanckou’s 2015 novel and voices survival and dignity.
“Life was a journey of discovery, and character was a variable that kept veering left and right in search of the perfect way for a particular day.”
Source: Abyssinian Chronicles, English trans. Knopf, 2000 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The line appears in Abyssinian Chronicles as part of the narrator Mugezi’s reflection.
- What remains uncertain
- Attribution to Isegawa is verified at the work level; the sentence functions as a narrated observation within the novel.
Isegawa frames identity as an ongoing, unstable process: character isn’t fixed but shifts in response to daily pressures. In Abyssinian Chronicles the line, voiced by the narrator, captures how history, family and migration push a person off-course and force constant reorientation.