Foreigner Quotes

“So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
Never enough for both.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“Finding an access to the ‘open public space’ is the challenge that really matters in life. We may know that everyone might feel like an alien to someone else or sometimes even to oneself, whether native, foreigner or exile, whether assimilated or singular, whether straight or gay. Be that as it may, a basic premise for the safeguard of self-fulfillment is the availability of a comforting maneuvering ground for one and all and an opportunity to enter a 'space of appearance' with a gate to a ‘citizenship of the world’. ("His master's voice" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“As for those who spite you, and seemingly just because, it's only evident that they're learning from you. Maybe you taste bad - kind of like medicine, kind of like truth - and to them, you're thought unsafe. There is flattery in being chewed out and spit up. Humans have always had a hard time digesting foreign things.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“The intellectual is called on the carpet... Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.”
― Herbert Marcuse

“Born a foreigner
I carry two halves with me
Loose skin I pull on
To go places and don't fit
Like apple pie and mochi”
― Emiko Jean, Tokyo Ever After

“The attitude to foreigners is like the attitude to dogs: dogs are neither human nor British, but so long as you keep them under control, give them their exercise, feed them, pat them, you will find their wild emotions are amusing, and their characters interesting.”
― V.S. Pritchett, London Perceived

“None of them seemed to mind sliding around in the faeces and choking in the smoke. They were determined not to miss the opportunity of watching a foreigner make a fool of himself.”
― Tahir Shah, In Search of King Solomon's Mines

“As far as Samson was concerned I was just another foreigner in pursuit of a lunatic quest.”
― Tahir Shah, In Search of King Solomon's Mines

“Yes, you have been away a very long time. "
"Oh, centuries and centuries; so long," she said, "that I’m sure I’m dead and buried, and this dear old place is heaven;”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“For the first time back then, I thought about everything seriously. The past and the future, both equally unknowable, and also this ongoing situation that the consulates call "transitory" but that we know in everyday language as "the present.”
― Anna Seghers, Transit

“Refuse to feel foreign on your own planet.”
― Ben Tolosa, Masterplan Your Success: Deadline Your Dreams

“Biting into a samosa is like trying to pronounce words in English, you have to shape your mouth in a way to get every bit.”
― Alain Bremond-Torrent, running is flying intermittently

“I am a human, if i was a foreigner i’d know.”
― Alain Bremond-Torrent, running is flying intermittently

“to bring a furrin child into the coonthry; an' depend on't, whether you an' me lives to see't or noo, it'll coom to soom harm. The first sitiation iver I held—it was a hold hancient habbey, wi' the biggest orchard o' apples an' pears you ever see—there was a French valet, an' he stool silk stoockins, an' shirts, an' rings, an' iverythin' he could ley his hands on, an' run awey at last wi' th' missis's jewl-box. They're all alaike, them furriners. It roons i' th' blood.”
― George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life

“Elle était étrangère et, comme tous les étrangers, transportait avec elle l'ombre d'un ailleurs.”
― Elif Shafak, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

“Whenever I'm in the company of strangers and speak in a way that reveals my Slav accent, the question follows: "Where are you from?" I always reply politely. It's very important to me that I say exactly where I'm from, and explain where that place is in case the person I'm talking to has never hears of my country ("in Europe, near Italy"). I suppose that's the need in me to feel accepted for what I am.”
― Semezdin Mehmedinović, My Heart

“The incident took place at Gerar, just as was the case with Abraham in Genesis 20:1-18, during a famine, just as was the case in Genesis 12:10 with Abraham, however, Isaac was prevented from going down to Egypt by God himself, and was summoned to dwell as a ‘sojourner’ (resident alien) in the earth of Gerar (26:2-3,6)… Isaac learned the lesson and thus lived within the realm of the Law and its commandments and statutes governing the earth, and this is what will be conveyed to Israel: ‘And he (God) humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did you fathers know; that he might make you know that any human being does not live by bread alone, but any human being lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.’ (Deut 8:3) Better, then, to dwell as a sojourner (that is, without possessing the land) in the location assigned by God’s word (of command) and share it with the presumed enemy, rather than end up dying in slavery in a seemingly ‘friendly’ land of plenty.”
― Paul Nadim Tarazi, Land and Covenant

“There is a French expression that says something like: “No one is prophet in his own country.” and there is another one that approximately says: “Who goes hunting loses his place.” somewhere in between i try to find my space.”
― Alain Bremond-Torrent, running is flying intermittently

“Foreigners have become people everywhere.”
― Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms

“A foreigner, an American, Trump will decide the foreigners, future, and fate. It is the black, cruel and inhumane move”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“Dopo aver trascorso un anno a Roma torno per un mese in America. Lì, subito, sento la mancanza dell'italiano. Non poterlo parlare e ascoltare ogni giorno mi angoscia. Quando vado nei ristoranti, nei negozi, in spiaggia, m'infastidisco: come mai la gente non parla italiano? Provo un sentimento di nostalgia struggente.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri

“Do not oppress the foreigners living in your land. Always, remember that you will be a foreigner when you travel to another land.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“NOS VOYONS DIS AUTRES CHAUSES COMME VOS + NOS RYONS ET PLEURONS DIS AUTRES TEMPES COMME VOS + ET NOS AIMONS DIS AUTRES ODORES COMME VOS +

PEREGRINATOR TEMPORUM

Graffitti im Kölner Stadtarchiv”
― Albrecht Gralle, Die Weissagerin

“Last summer, when the Cawley-Smiths had visited Tokyo, she’d been so loved by all the guys at the clubs, they kept asking if she was Charlize Theron.
Leeda was like David Hasselhoff. She was loved in Japan.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Peaches

“The Italian sunshine was the one thing she really missed. Apart from that, she had become accustomed to living in England - her home for over sixty years - and it had become her country. English people were polite and friendly, often sparked up a conversation with people they didn’t know and Lina liked that. She felt comfortable here.”
― Emanuela Cooper, Three Women Lost in London

“The Italian sunshine was the one thing she really missed. Apart from that, she had become accustomed to living in England - her home for over sixty years - and it had become her country. English people were polite and friendly, often sparked up a conversation with people they didn’t know and Lina liked that.”
― Emanuela Cooper, Three Women Lost in London

“And he said...

...a foreigner will always be left at the front door of your home.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Either you'll know me as a national hero
of every nation, or you won't know me at all.
So long as a single human calls me foreigner,
I'll conclude, I've achieved nothing at all.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“English: "By speaking, we enslave ourselves through the memory of others, and by silence, we make ourselves strangers."

Česky: „Mluvením zotročujeme sami sebe prostřednictvím paměti druhých a mlčením ze sebe děláme cizince.”
― Sebastián Wortys

“We are pilgrims who are going to the Holy Land.

His language seemed understandable, albeit strange, to the residents of Zara. The revelers' own speech was already garbled, too, so they regarded it with a fitting tolerance. Calmer already, they said to Arseny: Go on, then, cross yourself.

Arseny crossed himself.

The storm resumed in the same breath:

He cannot even cross himself properly! Could we have expected anything else from the Turkish infiltrators?

For a while, Ambrogio attempted to explain that Catholics and Orthodox cross themselves differently and demanded they be taken to the Venetian pretor, but nobody would listen to him any longer.”
― Eugene Vodolazkin, Laurus