Carson McCullers Quotes

Everyone desires relationships and community. Most people want to belong to a cohesive, like-minded group. It staves off loneliness. It promotes identity. These are natural and very human instincts.

I can't tell you how much I love Target and Costco, that kind of culture, because it's something I never felt a part of. I've always felt like a tourist because I have never fit in anywhere.

I have a big thing about needing to know that I belong - in my group of friends, in my family, in my industry.

I just always wanted to be part of something where I felt like I belonged.

To be a member of something. To be a member of something helps get rid of that lonely feeling.

I guess I always think of myself as more of the people. I always feel like a bit of an outsider.

I just haven't let myself get to a place where I've felt a part of any kind of a community, so I've always stayed outside of it.

Every human being has to feel a part of a tribe. It's programmed into us. And you have to feel that you're contributing to something.

Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact.

As an Anglo-Indian kid in Bolton, I was basically in a minority of one. That was a source of misery, but at the same time, one of the effects of receiving the message that you don't belong to the club is that you watch the club with detachment. The fact that no one quite knew who I was was a major contributory factor in starting to write.

I'm stuck somewhere a small island in the middle of the Atlantic where I'm alone. Because in France, they're like, 'No, you're not like us, you're not a French guy.' And in America, they're like, 'You're not like us.' I'm really alone in my little thing.

I'm always feeling like I don't belong, no matter where I am. So I'm just searching for a family nonstop, and sometimes I find it in the mosh pit, sometimes I find it when I'm doing some French TV show with the president's wife.

I've been in Los Angeles for a while, and the kind of psychological connection that one makes to people, it just doesn't happen out here.

I just really like people, and being a freelancer can be lonely during the day, when you're at home trying to write anything you can. 'Flight Of The Conchords' was so wonderful because I had a family for two years.

I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have, that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging, and recasting and looking at our modern history.

I had family and friends back home. Just because I could potentially feel alone in Los Angeles, that didn't mean I was alone.

The notion of 'we' is very important. I think, for any family, any community to be able to say 'we' in this family, it means something. It's dangerous to society when somebody will place himself or herself on the outside of 'we.'

You cannot isolate yourself from the crowd - even if you want to.

People tell me there are a lot of guys like me, which doesn't explain why I'm lonely.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

The essential dilemma of my life is between my deep desire to belong and my suspicion of belonging.

Montreal is just so multicultural and ethnic and diverse, and it's what makes us special. I say 'us' like I still live there, but I still do feel like a Montrealer.

I want to connect with people that feel unseen.

I felt very isolated with my identity virtually my entire life, that nobody really got it and that I didn't really have the personal agency to express it.