Quotes & Sayings About Leaving A Home

Being born in a place is only one way to belong, nor do you have to die there....

I knew at once that Magdala was home because I felt sighted there again, second sighted. It was not only the spring. In time everything spoke.

When birds rose into the air, I could read the pattern of their wings, and the path the wind made on the water carried messages. The very ground said make a path here, plant herbs there. These vine are not dead. Tend them and they'll bear fruit again.

Ancient trees offered shelter and wisdom as well as olives. And there were certain rocks that could absorb fatigue or agitation, leaving me refreshed and calm. — Elizabeth Cunningham

Jess began to wish she had worn a modest top that covered her up as far as- well, as far as her eyebrows. She wished she had at least rehearsed dancing in front of her full-length mirror before leaving home. She feared that her newly buoyant boobs might be getting rather out of hand. Bonnie especially - the left one - was beginning to feel a bit free-range, and it did seem a little drafty across her chest. Jess also began to worry that, in shaking up the soup so violently, she might somehow make it boil over. — Sue Limb

In this place, upwards of 400,000
British men were going to be killed. They'd lost 20,000
just the other day. He sucked a grim smile. It was like
rich countries deliberately killing themselves, leaving
their battered remains ready for the revolution that would surely come, for who could return home without
wanting to face those who had wasted good men thus? — Paul Cornell

Tonight, the moon came out, it was nearly full.
Way down here on earth, I could feel it's pull.
The weight of gravity or just the lure of life,
Made me want to leave my only home tonight.
I'm just wondering how we know where we belong
Is it in the arc of the moon, leaving shadows on the lawn
In the path of fireflies and a single bird at dawn
Singing in between here and gone — Mary Chapin Carpenter

One of the villagers had left his home to try his luck abroad. After twenty five years, having made a fortune, he returned to his country with his wife and child. Meanwhile his mother and sister had been running a small hotel in the village where he was born. He decided to give them a surprise and, leaving his wife and child in another inn, he went to stay at his mother's place, booking a room under an assumed name. His mother and sister completely failed to recognize him. At dinner that evening he showed them a large sum of money he had on him, and in the course of the night they slaughtered him with a hammer. After taking the money they flung the body into the river. Next morning his wife came and, without thinking, betrayed the guest's identity. His mother hanged herself. His sister threw herself into a well. — Albert Camus

How the hell was she going to fight them?
With style. She could almost hear Niko's voice. She grinned, despite herself. Do try not to die, won't you? That was Tyler. It would have been followed by a delicate yawn. And Oz: Keep your head down and don't be stupid. Lise: Bitch, do not even think about leaving me alone with all this testosterone. Giselle: You can't win if you die, so suck it up. Tutresiel: Princess, you aren't even trying if you're dying.
And Alexander: Come home. — Diana Pharaoh Francis

We're done, this is over. I'm packing your shit and you're leaving." I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "Everything is fucked up, don't you get that? It's ruined, all of it is ruined and you need to fucking leave." I'm so sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "You need to get a life." I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "All those sad, pathetic letters." I'm lying, don't believe me, please don't believe me. I loved your letters, I kept them all and I cherish every one of them. "I prefer women with a little more experience." I don't mean it. I don't mean any of it. Knowing I'm the only man who has ever been inside of you makes me feel like a fucking king and the luckiest man alive. I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "It doesn't get better when I come home to you. I hate this life." I'm lying! Every word is a lie. I love our life and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. I love you, I love you, I love you. — Tara Sivec

There is a moment, a chip in time, when leaving home is the lesser crime. — Paul Simon

Death, thy servant, is at my door. He has crossed the unknown sea and brought thy call to my home.

The night is dark and my heart is fearful---yet I will take up the lamp, open my gates and bow to him my welcome. It is thy messenger who stands at my door.

I will worship him placing at his feet the treasure of my heart.

He will go back with his errand done, leaving a dark shadow on my morning; and in my desolate home only my forlorn self will remain as my last offering to thee. — Rabindranath Tagore

Does anybody regret leaving a hotel room? Does anybody, who has a home, a real home somewhere, want to stay there? Does anybody look back with affection, or even disgust, at a hotel room when they leave it? — Toni Morrison

He pulled back, leaving them both breathless, and then tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "I'll follow you to the inn since it's on my way home." She nodded, her lips swollen from his kiss, her eyes a little glazed. "Are you okay to drive?" She smiled then looked down at his dick. "Well, if you can drive with a second stick shift, I think I can make it." He threw his head back and laughed then let her get in her car. — Carrie Ann Ryan

Father Wanderly, have you seen a demon or evil spirit actually leave the body? What did it look like? Could you see anything? Did you see a wisp, like smoke over a campfire? Does the demon get sucked into a void, clutching on to the old, possessed body like a life raft? Or does it go quietly, like a child leaving her parents' home for the final time? If you couldn't see anything, if the spirit was invisible, then how could you know if the exorcism really, truly worked? — Paul Tremblay

My home is such a powerfully imaginative place that the space is almost irrelevant. I think the house I live at on the Hudson is where I belong because it's the only place where I am that I never think about when I'm leaving. — Toni Morrison

It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice-cream sandwiches. — Lemony Snicket

Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home. — Huston Smith

Leaving a lot of movie sets, I've gone home and said, 'How come my hands are clean?' I should finish something and go home with dirt in my fingernails, because then you really feel that you've done something. — Michael Keaton

Traveling is sacred; mankind has traveled ever since the dawn of time, in search of hunting and grazing ground, or milder climates. Very few men manage to understand the world without leaving their home towns. When you travel - and I am not speaking of tourism, but of the solitary experience of a journey - four important things occur in your life: — Paulo Coelho

As a callow eighteen-year-old leaving for college, I'd seen my home town as a mere launching pad for a life in worldier locals, a pale to be from rather than a place to be. But years and miles away from home could never attenuate the city's hold on my identity and the more I explored places and people far from Hampton, the more my status as one of its daughters came to mean to me. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Show me a woman who hasn't fantasized about getting in the car and leaving home, and I'll show you a woman who doesn't know how to drive. — Susan Sussman

We have this judgmental way of looking at the idea of leaving a home or a family, and our society has reinforced this idea that if we "run away," we are "running away from our problems." In some cases, though, to face certain problems (in this case, two family members who are not mentally stable and who are not going to face up to their issues) the family members who are capable of facing reality must realize that leaving is a viable option. Some environments are harmful. As fellow humans it is our job to judge less and encourage more when others choose to remove themselves from harmful environments. — A.S. King

The hardest thing about being a full time chef is leaving my work behind when I go home at night. I'll toss and turn about a menu item or forget to order produce and wake up at 4 A.M. in a cold sweat over some artichokes. — Alexandra Guarnaschelli

Europe is so much the home of Horror, with its myths of vampires, werewolves, witchcraft and the undead, yet it's like those myths were exported to Hollywood, leaving Europe the room to develop a new tradition as a way of processing its traumas, particularly the two world wars. — Mark Gatiss

Sometimes, coming home in the early morning like this, I'd imagine things had altered while I was absent: a knife on the bread board that I didn't remember leaving out, a book face down on the table, a cup brimming with tea and dishwater in the sink. The evidence I wanted didn't need to be too elaborate or detailed. I could have constructed an entire afterlife from a half-moon of lemon rind or a small blister of jam on the tablecloth. — John Burnside

But sleep didn't come. She could hear Jace's soft piano playing through the walls, but that wasn't what was keeping her awake. She was thinking of Simon, leaving for a house that no longer felt like home to him, of the despair in Jace's voice as he said 'I want to hate you', and of Magnus, not telling Jace the truth: that Alec did not want Jace to know about his relationship because he was still in love with him. She thought of the satisfaction it would have brought Magnus to say the words out loud, to acknowledge what the truth was, and the fact that he hadn't said them - had let Alec go on lying and pretending - because that was what Alec wanted, and Magnus cared about Alec enough to give him that. Maybe it was true what the Seelie Queen had said, after all: Love made you a liar. — Cassandra Clare

I've decided it's not about me at all. It's a protective mechanism for them, a way of buffering themselves against my future death, like when teenagers distance themselves from their parents in preparation for leaving home. — Sara Gruen

Dating is an act of outrageous vulnerability. You're leaving the comfort of your home and your friends to subject yourself to the scrutiny of strangers. You're sliding into that restaurant booth, plopping your laptop and gym bag on the floor, and saying, 'Hi, I'm Sara. Let's see if we can start a life together, shall we?'

It doesn't get more optimistic than that. — Sara Eckel

On things she had to pack before leaving her home in advance of a forest fire, 1996. Childhood pictures and pictures of my life. Do you know how many pictures that is? Not just this life; I have pictures from 13,000 lives. — Shirley Maclaine

So when the book came out, my mother stunned us all by leaving my father. I think three months before the book came out, she left my father the day he retired from the Marine Corps. They had a parade and march, and she came home and left. — Terry Gross

This woman enabled her husband to cheat, and she wasn't doing either one of them any favors. Instead of leaving him, she would take him home, scold him, and then carry on with business as usual. Inside though, she would be hurting.
No woman could love a cheater and not pay the price for it. — Rose Wynters

She fell in love with freedom. In the Sommers' home she had lived shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear. Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his unpredictable justice, of authority, of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth. Hers had been a sugar-coated reality built on the unspoken, on courteous silences, well-guarded secrets, order, and discipline. She had aspired to virtue but now she questioned the meaning of the word. — Isabel Allende

If it's of any comfort, B. J. Casey and her colleagues speculate that there's an evolutionary reason why Kirk rather than Spock so often emerges the victor in the quest for control over an adolescent's mind. Human beings need incentives to leave the family nest. Leaving home is dangerous; leaving home is hard. It requires courage and learning lessons of independence. It may even require a purposeful recklessness. — Jennifer Senior

I complain about my life. I used to complain about boys or not being able to drive or failing a test. Now I complain about boys, not being able to drive, and leaving home so much. — Gabourey Sidibe

In the naivete of their youth, they believed Fate to be a kind mistress. None of them were prepared for the beast that was about to pick them up by the throats and shake them until their teeth rattled. — Melodie Ramone

I ceased the search to listen again, what the problem was. What's going on at home? Why was Luccas calling out Jane's name? What happened? Why could I hear him without connecting directly to him? I shook my head, but screams pierced through. I moved the shelf on its side, a loud crashing that startled the men outside. Falling to my knees, I covered my ears to them. My head banged against the metal and stayed there. "What in the name of Hera am I going to do?" I asked the air. The screams stopped but for how long? How long would silence be until they resumed? I raised my head, gently pulling my hands away and listened. Silence. Where were the men chasing me? Did they give in and go home? No, that would have been too easy. Saain would slay each man for leaving a traitor alive. — Millicent Ashby

Just giving the people a great show, leaving it all on the stage. Like when I'm finished I don't want to go home with nothing, I want to leave it all there on the stage, that's what I'm thinking about before I hit the stage. — Snoop Dogg

Social topics may hit too close to home for people, but then again, if you pull a heartstring, then that's what country music is. It's not just songs about getting drunk and leaving your girl. — Kenny Chesney

I sat at a table in my shadowy kitchen, staring down a bottle of Boone's Farm
Hard Lemonade, when a magic fluctuation hit. My wards shivered and died, leaving my home stripped of its defenses. The TV flared into life, unnaturally loud in the empty house.
I raised my eyebrow at the bottle and bet it that another urgent bulletin was on.
The bottle lost.
"Urgent bulletin!" Margaret Chang announced. "The Attorney General advises all citizens that any attempt at summoning or other activities resulting in the appearance of a supernaturally powerful being can be hazardous to yourself and to other citizens."
"No shit," I told the bottle. — Ilona Andrews

It is not just bookstores and libraries that are disappearing but museums, theaters, performing arts centers, art and music schools - all those places where I felt at home have joined the list of endangered species. The San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and my own hometown paper, The Washington Post, have all closed their weekend book review sections, leaving books orphaned and stranded, poor cousins to television and the movies. In a sign of the times, the Bloomberg News website recently transferred its book coverage to the Luxury section, alongside yachts, sports clubs and wine, as if to signal that books are an idle indulgence of the super-rich. But if there is one thing that should not be denied to anyone rich or poor it is the opportunity to dream. — Azar Nafisi

I still can't quite believe that this is really it. I'm really leaving. This frigid desert has been my home for a year and a half. I figured out how to survive, at least for a while, and I got used to how things worked. My terrifying struggle to stay alive became somehow routine. Get up in the morning, eat breakfast, tend my crops, fix broken stuff, eat lunch, answer e-mail, watch TV, eat dinner, go to bed. The life of a modern farmer. Then I was a trucker, doing a long haul across the world. And finally, a construction worker, rebuilding a ship in ways no one ever considered before this. I've done a little of everything here, because I'm the only one around to do it. — Andy Weir

Never before have I imagined my life without him - like this house, he is my only point of reference in this difficult existence, this unstable and frightening world. The thought of his leaving home fills me with a terror so strong, it takes my breath away. I feel like one of those seagulls covered in oil from a spill, drowning in a black tar of fear. — Tabitha Suzuma

Only a cat can seem well-traveled without ever leaving home. — Wendy Beck

How long since he'd been back home? Ten years? Fifteen? He'd stopped keeping track around the time he'd finally stopped looking over his shoulder. At the time, leaving had seemed too good to be true. He'd spent months feeling like he was half a step ahead of some nameless specter; like if he let his guard down, even for a second, whatever it was would drag him right back where he'd come from. — Laura Oliva

For the first time he considers the full emotional dimensions of the day. His life is changing but his parent's lives are changing too. Like a habitat, abruptly deprived of a major species, the household will be wrenched into realignment by his departure. Like all young people, he has no idea who his parents really are. For 18 years he has experienced their existence only in so far as it is related to his own needs. Suddenly his mind is full of questions. What do they talk about when he's not around? What secrets do they hold from each other? What aspirations have been left to languish? What private grievances held in check by the shared project of child rearing will now in his absence, lurch into the light? — Justin Cronin

living, we cover vast territories; imagine your life drawn on a map - a scribble where you grew up, each bus trip traced between school and home, or a clean line across the sea to a place you flew once. think of the time and things we accumulate, all the while growing more conscious of losing and leaving — Julia Kasdorf

Greek has a formula for every event - weddings, christenings, buying a new dress, having a haircut, talking about children, going away, coming back, leaving a house, leaving a home. Kalo risiko is for a new house. Kalo means good. Risiko means fate, but sounds ominously like danger. — John Mole

He was talking animatedly to two senior ladies, dressed in enough finery to buy the average home, no doubt. He brought one of their hands to his mouth, and then her friend's. He was such a charmer. I was charmed from here.
"He gets that from me," Feragal growled into my ear, leaving me to Ciaran, now making his way towards me.
I watched him stride certainly all the way to where I waited for him.
"Wow," he said, placing his hand at my waist, grazing his thumb over the detailing of the sash there. I was going to kiss Martha again when I got home.
"I like your sporran." I grinned.
"I like your everything," he countered, leaning in to kiss my cheek. "You look beautiful, Holly."
And I was done for the night. I could spill food down myself, trip over, whatever. The look in Ciaran's eyes was what I'd most wanted from the evening, and I already had it. To tuck away and keep forever. — Anouska Knight

Afterward, Isabel drove me home and I shut myself in the study with Rilke, and I read and I wanted.
And leaving you (there arent words to untangle it)
Your life, fearful and immense and blossoming,
So that, sometimes frustrated, and sometimes
understanding
Your life is sometimes a stone in you, and then, a star
I was beginning to undertand poetry. — Maggie Stiefvater

I've laid out a plan for how we keep people safe here at home, and I've laid out a plan of how we wage war and win by denying ISIS territory overseas. We must deny them their territory because the territory that they've conquered because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama declared victory in Iraq and against every generals advice withdrew all of our troops, leaving a vacuum, weaponry, territory for ISIS to conquer, that territory, their caliphate, is that from which they draw legitimacy, potency, credibility. We have to deny them that territory. — Carly Fiorina

I want you here. With me. All the time.
I want to come home and hear the shower running
and get excited because I know you're in it. I want
to struggle every morning to get up and go to the
gym because I hate the idea of leaving your warm
body behind in bed. I want to hear a key turn
in the lock and feel contented knowing you're home. — Scarlett Cole

It was a time before Facebook and Instagram and texting. I imagine it must be easier now, for college students. Home must not feel so far away anymore. But how do you cut the apron strings if the strings are virtual? — Kirstie Collins Brote

I shook my head. "You need help. Just like your mom. My little sister kept fossilized lunches under her bed for the dust bunnies she raised there." I picked up a game from the neat stack. "Want to play some Battleship?" I wasn't leaving him alone with that thing in there. Chad armed himself with a notebook, and we went to war. Historically, war has often been used as a distraction for problems at home. Both of us — Patricia Briggs

A complex world of intrigues and power play among couples has
combined to deny young people the love and attention they truly
deserve, more and more teenagers are leaving home to peer up with
bad influence which eventually lands them in jail for the lucky ones
and six feet under for the not so lucky. — Oche Otorkpa

I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found. Why do I keep ignoring the place of true love and persist in looking for it elsewhere? Why do I keep leaving home where I am called a child of God, the Beloved of the Father? 9 — J.P. Moreland

Love is not a charm that pops into the world from a better place to bless two individuals before flitting back home, leaving the couple broken back in two parts and forlorn but fundamentally unchanged. Love is a fire that burns in the soul, sometimes for good, sometimes just for now, sometimes hot enough to scorch and sometimes with a low and sustainable glow. Either way, it leaves the original constituents permanently altered. After the fact everything is different - not just the relationship, but the people involved. — Michael Marshall

As you know, Hurricane Sandy has affected thousands of families, leaving them without electricity, without household goods and, in the worst cases, without a home. — Thalia

The state of my poor boy's health prevents me from leaving home for a night. — Edward Irving

In his better moments, Mr Baxter is a decent, ordinary guy - a guy you wouldn't mistake for anyone special. But he is special. In my book, he is. For one thing he has a full night's sleep behind him, and he's just embraced his wife before leaving for work. But even before he goes, he's already expected home a set number of hours later. True, in the grander scheme of things, his return will be an event of small moment - but an event nonetheless. — Raymond Carver

With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound. — Buffalo Bill

Good evening, Mrs. Grey," Christian says softly. He's standing by the piano, dressed in a tight black T-shirt, and jeans ... those jeans- the ones he wore in the playroom. Oh my. They are over washed pale-blue denim, snug, ripped at the knee and hot. He saunters over to me, his feet bare, the top button of the jeans undone, his smoldering eyes never leaving mine. "Good to have you home. I've been waiting for you. — E.L. James

Grown-ups shouldn't finish books they're not enjoying. When you're no longer a child, and you no longer live at home, you don't have to finish everything on your plate. One reward of leaving school is that you don't have to finish books you don't like. — John Irving

The moment that's where I,
Kill the conversation wrap this up a lie that I'm enjoying every minute with myself,
And she could make hell feel just like home,
So I'm never leaving her alone,
But if your lightning lips aren't mine,
Then I don't know the awkward stranger to my right,
( but she's crying ) — Pierce The Veil

It is probably easier to land a quadruple jump in ice-skating than to get my five children to depart our home in a timely manner. Everyone knows leaving anywhere with a large group is extremely difficult. I don't know how Moses did it. — Jim Gaffigan

We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there. — Pascal Mercier

Over the decade that movie producer Menahem Golan had retained the rights for Spider-Man, he'd managed to involve half a dozen different corporate entities. Golan had originally bought the Spider-Man rights for his Cannon Films; after leaving Cannon, he transferred them to 21st Century Films. Next, he raised money by preselling television rights to Viacom, and home video rights to Columbia Tri-Star; then he signed a $5 million deal with Carolco that guaranteed his role as producer. But after Carolco assigned the film to James Cameron, Cameron refused to give Golan the producer credit, and the lawsuits began. By the end of 1994, Carolco was suing Viacom and Tri-Star; Viacom and Tri-Star were countersuing Carolco, 21st Century, and Marvel; and MGM - which had swallowed Cannon - was suing Viacom, Tri-Star, 21st Century, and Marvel. — Sean Howe

No domestic dispute between Franny and David had inspired the removal of their wedding rings. She would take hers off at work when she was giving scalp massages. Once she thought she had lost the ring, but she found it in the treatment room on a candleholder David had made for her during a personal failure of a pottery class he had taken the year he lost his job. After she found her ring, she started leaving it at home. — Amelia Gray

The Chinese foreign ministry has said more than once that I am a free person. Did I do anything wrong by leaving my home? — Chen Guangcheng

What will life be like without her? I am dreadfully sad she is leaving. What if she just disappears; gets tired of all this trouble at home? What if she leaves me too? How heavy is a dresser when you're the only one pushing it against the door? I feel truly on my own. — Mira Bartok

Now I was also trying to understand how someone could end such intense desire without leaving a trace. If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger? A couple of houseplants? A dinky Home Depot Phalaenopsis in a coffee can? I personally have always found giving up on something a thousand times harder than getting it started, but evidently Laroche's finishes were downright and absolute, and what's more, he also shut off any chance of amends. — Susan Orlean

In a feast of fame and talks,
Scandal flashing, raising tongue and brows.
In a blast of bombing and power play,
Fear and death dig more revenge.

In a forgotten continent,
Famine and drought devour lives.
In an unfortunate eye of a rebelling weather,
Crashing homes, leaving many in devastation and desperation.

In a country shaking with violence,
Innocent victims cry for justice and peace.
In a home shaking with turmoil,
Humble patient, hiding voice wants to be heard.

In a tick of a second,
A new breathe of life beats!
To belong in this world.
Constantly changing, decaying or improving?

In a snap of innovation:
Life goes big leap!
Regression somewhere unseen,
But felt in a slow, long run. — Angelica Hopes

[A]dventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result - and have been since at least the time of Odysseus - of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it again. All adventures happen in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep or the county line, into that place where the structures, laws, and conventions of your upbringing no longer apply, where the support and approval (but also the disapproval and repression) of your family and neighbors are not to be had: then you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret. — Michael Chabon

Go home, talk about it together. Bake Christmas cookies and crap. Then tell me what you want to happen. Know that I'm yours. My loyalty, my soul is yours no matter what you decide. Crap, you can shoot me in the back, and I'll never want anything but to be around you hookers."
Blake stood and shook his head. "Nah, I don't need time. I appreciate the place in Hawaii, and it would be great to go to - maybe for a vacation sometime? But I'm here. I'm not leaving you. You're my family. — Debra Anastasia

We can't all leave this country, Bijan had told me-this is our home. The world is a large place, my magician had said when I went to him with my woes. You can write and teach wherever you are. You will be read more and heard better, in fact, once you are over there. To go or not to go? In the long run, it's all very personal, my magician reasoned. I always admired your former colleague's honesty, he said. Which former colleague? Dr. A, the one who said his only reason for leaving was because he liked to drink beer freely. I am getting sick of people who cloak their personal flaws and desires in the guise of patriotic fervor. They stay because they have no means of living anywhere else, because if they leave, they won't be the big shots they are over here; but they talk about sacrifice for the homeland. And then those who do leave claim they've gone in order to criticize and expose the regime. Why all these justifications? — Azar Nafisi

The pleasure of leaving home, care-free, with no concern but to enjoy, has also as a pendant the pleasure of coming back to the old hearthstone, the home to which, however traveled, the heart still fondly turns, ignoring the burden of its anxieties and cares. — Herman Melville

In the artifacts that are conscious, memories of vanished lives still flicker. Tissues that were changed without dying hold the moment that a boy heard his sister was leaving home. They hold multiplication tables. They hold images of sexuality and violence and beauty. They hold the memories of flesh that no longer exists. They hold metaphors: mitochondria, starfish, Hitler's-brain-in-a-jar, hell realm. They dream. Structures that were neurons twitch and loop and burn and dream. Images and words and pain and fear, endless. — James S.A. Corey

Bound for your distant home"

Bound for your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I've known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.

But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, 'When we meet again,
in the shadow of olive-trees,
we shall kiss, in a love without pain,
under cloudless infinities.'

But there, alas, where the sky
shines with blue radiance,
where olive-tree shadows lie
on the waters glittering dance,
your beauty, your suffering,
are lost in eternity.
But the sweet kiss of our meeting ......
I wait for it: you owe it me ....... — Alexander Pushkin

Everyone is always leaving each other, chasing down the next seeming opportunity - home or body. Where does it stop? Does it ever? I want to believe it all leads to something grander than the imagination, grander than the end-stop of the Pacific. Or is that it: You get to the place where you land; you are tired now; you settle. You settle. You build a home and raise a family. There are years of eating and arguing, working and waking. There are years of dying. No one knows what the last image will be. — Bich Minh Nguyen

A mother's body against a child's body makes a place. It says you are here. Without this body against your body there is no place. I envy people who miss their mother. Or miss a place or know something called home. The absence of a body against my body created a gap, a hole, a hunger. This hunger determined my life ... The absence of a body against my body made attachment abstract. Made my own body dislocated and unable to rest or settle. A body pressed against your body is the beginning of nest. I grew up not in a home but in a kind of free fall of anger and violence that led to a life of constant movement, of leaving and falling. It is why at one point I couldn't stop drinking and fucking. Why I needed people to touch me all the time. It had less to do with sex than location. When you press against me, or put yourself inside me. When you hold me down or lift me up, when you lie on top of me and I can feel your weight, I exist. I am here. — Eve Ensler

I think when people say they dread going into work on Monday morning, it's because they know they are leaving a piece of themselves at home. Why not see what happens when you challenge your employees to bring all of their talents to their job and reward them not for doing it just like everyone else, but for pushing the envelope, being adventurous, creative, and open-minded, and trying new things? — Tony Hsieh

Addiction" might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society. Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in "the distant country," leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in "a distant country." It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I arrived in Dallas two days before the party and planned on leaving the day after. I hated the city as much as I thought I would. All anyone could talk about were the Cowboys and their chances in the playoffs. Charlene was happy. Joe was not, or so it seemed to me, in spite of the fact that he had finally gotten exactly what he thought he wanted from a wife: she gave him an adorable boy, she did everything in their home including laundry, and most important, she did not embarrass him. Whenever I was alone with Joe during the two days I was there, Charlene would send her son into the room with us. The first time I carried him, Charlene made sure to mention how surprised she was that I had motherly instincts. She probably used the pronoun we more in one day than I have in my whole life. I did not blame her. Most plain women stake their claims clumsily. — Rabih Alameddine

In Eudora Welty's masterful story "Why I Live at the P.O." (1941), the narrator is engaged in a sibling rivalry with her younger sister, who has come home after leaving under suspicious if not actually disgraceful circumstances. The narrator, Sister, is outraged at having to cook two chickens to feed five people and a small child just because her "spoiled" sister has come home. What Sister can't see, but we can, is that those two fowl are really a fatted calf. It may not be a grand feast by traditional standards, but it is a feast, as called for upon the return of the Prodigal Son, even if the son turns out to be a daughter. Like the brothers in the parable, Sister is irritated and envious that the child who left, and ostensibly used up her "share" of familial goodwill, is instantly welcomed, her sins so quickly forgiven. Then — Thomas C. Foster

The United States, which has been called the home of the persecuted and the dispossessed, has been since its founding an asylum for emotional orphans. For over three hundred years, refugees from political oppression, religious persecution, famine, poverty, and a rigid class system which limited educational and economic opportunities have been leaving their native villages and cities and coming to the United States in search of freedom and a better life. — Eileen Simpson

I think me leaving Detroit shaped my style. Me leaving, going to New York, going to L.A. and seeing what they were doing there. I think that inspired me more than what people were doing back home. — Danny Brown

Bradford paused and his expression shadowed. He pulled her back and held her tight. Whispered, "Don't say it, okay? I know what's coming and I don't want to hear it. Not tonight. Tomorrow maybe, but not tonight."
He wasn't talking about Kate Breeden. They both knew that Munroe could only bear so much pain and loss before coming completely undone. She needed time away, time to heal, and she could only do that by returning to who she was: the lone operative, shut down and shut off.
Munroe set the glass on an end table, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. She truly loved him; always would. She smiled and fought back the sadness, glad in a way that she was spared from having to say good-bye, from uttering the words she never wanted to speak - although, in truth, there would never really be a good-bye, because if this was where home was, then like a homing pigeon she'd return, and Bradford had to know it, just as he also knew her reasons for leaving. — Taylor Stevens

If I could peer into a crystal ball, I imagine I would see an ever-growing list of canceled tours, concerts, and appearances in her future, for fear of leaving her husband home alone. — Brandi Glanville

Is easy, particularly if home has been a place of abuse or neglect. But oftentimes leaving home is difficult, especially if home has been a good place. Of course that is what home is meant to be: a good place, a place — Austin Fischer

His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world. For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement. He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be run for her sake. — G.K. Chesterton

Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it's starting a new business, whether it's leaving home, whether it's getting married, or whether it's flying in space. — Chris Hadfield

When they reached the top of the hill they turned and looked down at the valley. Moominhouse was just a blue dot, and the river a narrow ribbon of green: the swing they couldn't see at all. "We've never been such a long way from home before," said Moomintroll, and a little goose-fleshy thrill of excitement came over them at the thought. — Tove Jansson

I've been acting since I was a little kid. It was my escape from my day which had to do with a father leaving, and a mother not being home, and her struggling and doing her best and all that. But it wasn't fun. I would go into theater class. If she were a stay-at-home mom, I wouldn't have that discomfort inside that kept me pushing. — Daphne Zuniga

In life, a person will come and go from many homes. We may leave a house, a town, a room, but that does not mean those places leave us. Once entered, we never entirely depart the homes we make for ourselves in the world. They follow us, like shadows, until we come upon them again, waiting for us in the mist. — Ari Berk

At the curb, Velia turned, remembering the first day she stood here debating with herself about turning back, running home. But, her inner victim convinced her, this was the right thing to do. Now, she'd be leaving this home that gave her refuge for a time. Where she began to heal. She stood here as the person she used to be before falling victim to abuse - lost for a while. She smiled when she turned back to her car, loaded it, and left to be with the man she loved. — Mary J. McCoy-Dressel

The hardest part about what I do, the most vulnerable place is my relationship with my family and Sara, my amazing partner, because I'm leaving a lot. And as a touring artist, I'm constantly coming and going, but also when I'm at home, my studio's at home. I'm leaving to go into a music world in my head. — Michael Franti

I want to hate him for what he did. Leaving us. It's not right. He's gone and I'm stuck here in this fucking funeral home, staring at his casket. There's no way out. Not for me, and certainly not for him. The casket is closed. Bolted shut for eternity. No one forced him to be a Jackass wannabe, though. — Jolene Perry

The world is such a big place; staying in one town your whole life, is like never leaving your house. — Chris Geiger

Courtney was a doctor herself. She diagnosed herself with Schizophrenia years ago, but didn't take any medication. The point of her barely leaving her home or having limited conversations with people, was to keep her mood swings under control. — Nako

Anoshe was a word for strangers in the street, and lovers between meetings, for parents and children, friends and family. It softened the blow of leaving. Eased the strain of parting. A careful nod to the certainty of today, the mystery of tomorrow. When a friend left, with little chance of seeing home, they said anoshe. When a loved one was dying, they said anoshe. When corpses were burned, bodies given back to the earth and souls to the stream, those left grieving said anoshe.

Anoshe brought solace. And hope. And the strength to let go. — V.E Schwab

There is a sense of danger in leaving what you know, even if what you know isn't much. These mill towns with their narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared that if I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it. The other reason I didn't want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of person who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn't one of the people, nor would I ever be.
I had a vision for my life. It wasn't clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my poverty behind me. I wasn't happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn't worry about it. It didn't define me. We're always in the making. God always has us on his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose.
It was time to change, to find a new purpose. — John William Tuohy

Danes, Norse... all were from the northlands in the eyes of her people. To their fright-frozen minds, Hakan was another of the dreaded Norse, sweeping over the land like a plague and leaving little in the wake. But summer had yielded a different crop for her: not all Norse were vicious raiders out for death and plunder.
Hakan braced one foot on a rock. "And now the Norse wolf brings you safely home."...
"Aye," she said. — Gina Conkle

I thought of my mother late that night, after leaving Dorothy, as I followed the moon's path back home across the Moose River. My mother, maybe she was in that moon's light. I didn't know any more, but when I was younger, Iuse to imagine that she was. I'd talk to the moon some nights, and I knew my mother listened. I haven't done that in a long time, me. -Through Black Spruce, Joseph Boyden, ch 13, pg 119 — Joseph Boyden