Geographical Displacement Quotes

We make a mistake forsaking England and moving out into the periphery of life. After all, Taormina, Ceylon, Africa, America -- as far as we go, they are only the negation of what we ourselves stand for and are: and we're rather like Jonahs running away from the place we belong.

My family is from Elmhurst, Queens, 54th Avenue, but I was born in Northern California.

The Raiders moved from Oakland to Los Angeles, didn't like it, didn't get along. Whatever it was, moved back to Oakland.

As a European I had fit in almost seamlessly in New York for the last 25 years, but in Oklahoma I stood out like a sore thumb.

Kids my age never left California. And here I was, going to school with Aboriginal kids in a dream-like location.

I can remember being a young kid, twelve, thirteen years old just with my headphones on, on the train, listening to rappers paint these vivid pictures. Listening to Mobb Deep and feeling like I was in Queensbridge even though I'm on the Southside of Chicago.

I felt a little lost as a student. At Iowa, I felt as if I had gotten into this program that was going to save me, and so I moved myself across the country for grad school and yet still didn't have a home. It was upsetting. And I know that's a common feeling.

When I first left Florida for Boston, I was so eager to shed my Floridian identity, perhaps some of my earlier surreal gestures felt hollow and unconvincing because they were not rising from the particular brand of the uncanny I knew best.

When I was 15, I was not living with my parents anymore. They were on an island in the Caribbean and I was back in Paris, where I lived with my sisters between 15 and 19.

Plenty of people say my guesses about a future drought in the western U.S. (where I live and grew up) are wrong, so I don't see why I won't be wrong in some people's eyes when I go set a story on foreign shores.

I'm from Louisiana and live in Texas now.

I have been on the margins in terms of having to find a place to live and getting a job, but at some point, and before that point, I always thought no matter where I am, that's the center.