Read through the most famous quotes by topic #exile
I’m by myself,” she said finally. “No family to speak of.” “I see.” Leaning forward again, he rested his arms against the table. “That must be rather difficult.” “Sometimes.” “And lonely, I imagine. Perhaps that is why you came here tonight?” Her jaw popped under the strain of maintaining decorum. “First: I said I was alone, not lonely. There's a big difference. And second: is that really why you think I'm here?” “I do not know what to think. I know you must have reasons for being here other than what you have already hinted at. Reasons important enough to make an otherwise intelligent woman not only bring food to a stranger so late at night, but also accept his invitation to sit inside an empty motel room without a second thought.” “Why don't you just call me a hooker while you're at it? ↗
exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement. ↗
This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real. Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air. ↗
Life is a relentless expulsion from where we come from and an ongoing deportation to alien realms. We are in exile and our greatest dream is to return to the lost land. It is the greatest dream because no matter how long our exile is going to last, the dream will remain. It is the greatest dream because when we finally care only for this dream, then our exile will be over. ↗
