Uprootedness Quotes

I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things being one day here and the next day not; a sense anything could happen. Then, all of a sudden, my mother met my stepfather, and her life became happier, and my life changed, my name changed.

What greater grief than the loss of one's native land.

Uprootedness uproots everything except the need for roots.

Homesickness is not always a vague, nostalgic, almost beautiful emotion, although that is somehow the way we always seem to picture it in our mind. It can be a terribly keen blade, not just a sickness in metaphor but in fact as well. It can change the way one looks at the world; the faces one sees in the street look not just indifferent but ugly... perhaps even malignant. Homesickness is a real sickness--the ache of the uprooted plant.

The theme of exile is attractive to me, because it's sort of like the family business. Not just music, but travel.

This was nostalgia in the literal Greek sense: the pain of not being able to return to one's home and family.

I don't think I'll ever escape the fact that I don't belong anywhere in particular. I've often dreamed about going back to Nigeria, but that's a very romantic notion. It's a hideous country to go to in reality.

far away from my country I would be like those trees they chop down at Christmastime, those poor rootless pines that last a little while and then die.