Colum McCann Quotes

I have a very powerful sense of place, but I have a very powerful sense of being a migrant, so it's both. It seems like I'm always leaving my home. That's part of the formula. I love the Dominican Republic. I go back all the time. I love New Jersey. Go back all the time.

I'm very British at heart. When I come to England, I say I'm coming home, and then it's funny: when I leave England to go back to L.A., I also say I'm going back home.

When people ask me where I'm from, I say I'm from the Sudan. But when they ask what my hometown is, I say London. It's where I lived, and it's where my whole family lived.

I really see myself as a homegirl. Wales is my first home. London is my second home - I've been there 14 years now.

I am not quite sure where home is right now. I do have places in London and Milan, and a house in Spain. I guess I would say home is where my mother is, and she lives in Spain.

I am British. I love Britain for all its faults and all its virtues. My husband is American and I am largely based in Los Angeles, but whenever someone asks me where home is, I automatically say 'London.'

I have two homes, like someone who leaves their hometown and/or parents and then establishes a life elsewhere. They might say that they're going home when they return to see old friends or parents, but then they go home as well when they go to where they live now. Sarajevo is home, Chicago is home.

It's possible that Israel will be my second home, but it won't be my only home.

I'm fully English, but Portugal is my home.

Today, I'm Brazilian, born in Rio de Janeiro, but my second home is Paris. Nobody can change that.

I sort of consider myself a Nigerian who spends a lot of time in the U.S.

I live in L.A. so I worry my kids aren't that connected to Britain, I suppose I don't want them to become American kids. We try to get back three or four times a year. When they go to school they speak with a British-American accent but when they come home to us they go back to their British accent.

You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow.

All I ever want is to return to either Bangladesh, my motherland, or India, my adopted home.

I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries.

It's strange; when I was younger and people would ask, 'Where are you from?', I'd say, 'West Africa', which was odd because I'm obviously not African, but it was my home.

Don't think I am not homesick for America. I say 'homesick' advisedly because I am a man with two homes - America, which gave me hospitality for many happy years, and where my daughter was born; and my native England.

I'm living in California but I have a place that is mine in Chile and I belong there. I am no longer an exile.

Madrid is what I call home, but also the States.

I was born in Peru, and we moved to Scotland when I was 15, but I've not lived here for a long time. But I would always say that I am Scottish, and Scotland is as close to a home as I have.

I don't have a place anywhere but Australia; I just don't spend much time there.

Israel is the country of my birth. When I come here, I feel I'm coming home.

I don't think many people consider in their heart that they have two places that are home.

Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and not-belonging.

I never considered myself as somebody in exile because, different to my father who, yes, was in exile because he left Haiti as an adult, for me it was just to be somewhere else. I carried Haiti with me everywhere, but I also carried, you know, my youth in a public school in Brooklyn. It's part of who I am as well.