You Were Born Here Quotes & Sayings

At every point I wished that I was born English. They need to make it colder in here. You could hang meat in this room. But, yeah ... I grew up in a very English household. My folks were from Liverpool. I've said this before, but there is nothing more English than an Englishman that no longer lives in England. — Mike Myers

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

Look here, because they were born you think they have to turn out to be men? That's just an old-fashioned idea. And who tells them that? A big organization. One more big organization. A big organization makes dough or it doesn't last. If it makes dough it's for dough. — Saul Bellow

Champions get up! When you're down to nothing, God is up to something! Champions get up! Focus your mind, pull yourself together. If you are at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on! You are a champion. You are more than a conqueror. Keep the faith. Cry if you must. You are still here. God is not through with you yet. You were born to win. Champions get up! You are a champion. You have GREATNESS within you! — Les Brown

The problem is that after two centuries of conflict about just who was wanted in the Australian nation the term 'Australia' both includes and excludes. There are still people for whom 'Australian' means predominatly Anglo-Celtic white people whose parents were born here before 'New Australians' came as migrants after the Second World War. A common alternative to 'white people' (who from an Aboriginal perspective might be more genially called 'whitefellas') is 'Europeans'. This makes an incongruous appeal to history. Politically the colonisers were British, but they includes people of many nationalities. It's an odd usage, as when you see a sign in a national park telling you 'Europeans' brought the invasive weeds and pests. They brought the sign and the concept of a park too, and 'they', in a complex sense, are 'us'. — Nicholas Jose

One of the things I want ... all the kids here to remember, is that these [Major League Soccer] stars were not born superstar athletes ... Many of them started out just like many of you-playing on a team at school, or just kicking a ball around on the playground with their friends. But they stuck with it. And I tell this to my girls all the time. I mean, you get to the point when ... things you enjoy ... start getting hard-that's when you know you're getting good, and you have to stick through it. — Michelle Obama

Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way, you will wake up one morning and find yourself lost. This is a hard, simple truth. If it hasn't happened to you yet, consider yourself lucky. When it does, when one day you look around and nothing is recognizable, when you find yourself alone in a dark wood having lost the way, you may find it easier to blame it on someone else
an errant lover, a missing father, a bad childhood
or it may be easier to blame the map you were given
folded too many times, out-of-date, tiny print
but mostly, if you are honest, you will only be able to blame yourself.
One day I'll tell my daughter a story about a dark time, the dark days before she was born, and how her coming was a ray of light. We got lost for a while, the story will begin, but then we found our way. — Nick Flynn

Father Romain always made much of our being from the same place, just as Sebatstien did. Most people here did. It was a way of being joined to your old life through the presence of another person. At times you could sit for a whole evening with such individuals, just listening to their existence unfold, from the house where they were born to the hill where they wanted to be buried. It was their way of returning home, with you as a witness or as someone to bring them back to the present ... — Edwidge Danticat

The imposter syndrome is at the core off every human being's soul. We're born with it. It's why human beings are alive today. It's an innate sense you're born with. It's why our ancestors avoided the saber-toothed tiger, because they doubted themselves. They were scared of certain things. That's why they worked hard to learn how to build fire, and taking it all through the generations, that impostor syndrome is always going to be there. Instead of being afraid and letting it get you down, be that 1% who embraces the impostor syndrome and realizes that it's never going away. Because the impostor syndrome exists, it weeds out the 99% of people who cannot get over it and cannot get over their fear. It puts the people who do, into the top 1%, and anyone can join us here, when you just embrace the impostor syndrome. — Harry Duran

You were born to be real, not to be perfect. You are here to be you, not to live someone else's life. — Ralph Marston

It was a newsmagazine she was reading, something she hadn't done for quite a while - she turned one page quickly, because she couldn't stand to look at the president's face: His close-set eyes, the jut of his chin, the sight offended her viscerally. She had lived through a lot of things with this country, but she had never lived through the mess they were in now. Here was a man who looked retarded, Olive thought, remembering the remark made by the woman in Moody's store. You could see it in his stupid little eyes. And the country had voted him in! A born-again Christian with a cocaine addiction. So they deserved to go to hell, and would. — Elizabeth Strout

It would be the simplest thing to say, my homeland is where I was born. But when you returned, you found nothing. What does that mean? It would be the simplest thing to say, my homeland is where I will die. But you could die anywhere, or on the border between two places. What does that mean? After a while the question will become harder. Why did you leave? Why did you leave? For twenty years you have been asking, why did they leave? Leaving is not a negation of the homeland, but it does turn the problem into a question. Do not write a history now. When you do that, you leave the past behind, and what is required is to call the past to account. Do not write a history except that of your wounds. Do not write a history except that of your exile. You are here - here, where you were born. And where longing will lead you to death. So, what is homeland? — Mahmoud Darwish

Immortality: "It is impossible to be conscious of being unconscious."

It is not possible to be aware of being unconscious from your own perspective. You cannot be aware of not being aware. You can be less aware/conscious, such as when you are asleep, but not completely unconscious (dead), because time would stand still for you. A billion years could pass, and you would not know it.

How do you know you are dead? It is not possible to be aware of any gaps in life; it is continuous and never-ending from your own point of view.

Death and birth are a continuous event from your own perspective.

You will die physically, but you will be born into a new physical body. Being born happens, or you would not be here now. You were born into this life. It is what we know happens. There is no evidence anything else happens. True or false? — Michael Smith

You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours. — Herb Brooks

We were all born by accident but this wandering caravan
will make camp in perfection
Forget the nonsense categories of there and here, race, nation, religion, starting point and destination
You are soul, and you are love, ...
No more questions now as to what it is we're doing here — Coleman Barks

Where are we? -Braeden
In the deepest part of your mind, where Carden can never find you. It's the goodness you've developed despite everything, the kindness and love you're capable of even though you were born to kill. Hide here with me, and he'll never find us. -Kara — S.M. Boyce

Being born doesn't make a single soul important. But you were important when I met you, that girl who dressed as a boy, who taught herself to shoot true, who dreamed and saved and wanted so badly. That girl was someone who had made herself matter. She was someone I liked. What the hell has happened since you came here that she is so worthless to you? What's happened that only my brother's approval and some power you never needed before can make you important? That's why I didn't want to bring you into this revolution, Amani. Because I didn't want to watch the Blue-Eyed Bandit get unmade by a prince without a kingdom. — Alwyn Hamilton

Your namesake dwelt on this holy mountain three thousand years ago. He came here to listen for the voice of God." Elijah waited, knowing there would be more forthcoming. The wind rummaged uneasily in the grape arbors. "He heard it in a gentle breeze, not in rushing about the world looking for projects. Our vocation is a call to listening. To adoration of the One who dwells among us. That is why you came here. That is why you were born." Elijah — Michael D. O'Brien

It doesn't matter where you are right now. No matter where you are, you're on the way to greatness If you desire that reality. Be present. Be grateful for the stepping stones that have you here today reflecting on your dreams. Stepping stones are a necessary part of the success process. Go into overdrive now. You can do this. No one ever made it in just one day. Each step is a part of the process. It doesn't matter what it takes! You're winning! Keep flowing all the way there. Stay up. You were born a winner! — Sereda Aleta Dailey

You catch any white man off guard in here right now, you catch him off guard and ask him what he is, he doesn't say he's an American. He either tells you he's Irish, or he's Italian, or he's German, if you catch him off guard and he doesn't know what you're up to. And even though he was born here, he'll tell you he's Italian. Well, if he's Italian, you and I are African even though we were born here. — Malcolm X

Not everyone in the world is alike. And some of us are a lot more different than others. Some of us were born like this, some of us were changed. But no matter how this happened to you, if you are here it is because this is your destiny. It was chosen for you. — C.C. Hunter

oh, why am I a girl? Why am I not a stupid - ? Look at you; you're stupider than I am, not much, but some, and you can lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else, and you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified - and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but now what's in store for me - I have to marry, that goes without saying. Who? I'm too bright for most men, and yet I have to descend to their level and let them patronize my intellect in order to get their attention. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Remember that if I were born of the underworld, you were born of flowers. You are the blood the forest feeds upon, and it is you who gave the woods their dark magic. Time doesn't exist, and in another world I never left you. I've transformed your wounds into a scepter for a queen. The nightcatcher may think that she's had her victory - but your veins are buried in the map of the earth and she can never have you. She thinks she can own the universe because she's enslaved gods and eaten stars, but she couldn't even kill me, living here in her tunnels, because you protected me with your love. — Autumn Christian

Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it
tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest
if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself
you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say Here at last is the thing I was made for. — C.S. Lewis

I believe music is a place everyone of us can go to. I don't care who you are, where you were born, what you do with your life. Everyone can come here in music and be equal. — Hayley Williams

Here was an unknown quantity-a child in breeches with a blue scarf wound around his neck whose job it was to get them out and back alive. This ... was the greatest terror of war: what you didn't know of the men who told you what to do-where to go and when. What if they were mad-or stupid? What if their fear was greater than yours? Or what if they were brave and crazy-wanting and demanding bravery from you? He looked away. He thought of being born-and trusting your parents. Maybe that was the same. Your parents could be crazy too. Or stupid. Still-he'd rather his father was with him-telling him what to do. Then he smiled. He knew that his father would take one look at the crater and tell him not to go. — Timothy Findley

You've walked the woods today. Tell me there isna something about this land that doesna take hold of you and sink into your verra soul."
Her smile slowly faded. "It did. How did you know?"
"You were born here, Iona.
You were part of this land, just as it's a part of you. You've been gone a long time, but it still remembers you. You just needed to remember it. — Donna Grant

- What were you thinking about, child?
- I was thinking of heaven.
- It's unnecessary for you to think of heaven: there's already enough to consider about earth. Are you tired of living, you who have barely been born?
- No, but everyone prefers heaven to earth.
- Well, not I. For since heaven, as well as earth, has been made by God, you may count on encountering up there the very same evils as here below. After your death, you will not be rewarded according to your deserts, for if injustices are done you on this earth (as you will find out later by experience) there is no reason why, in the next life, you will not be further wronged. The best thing for you to do is not think of God, and since it is refused you, to make your own justice. — Comte De Lautreamont

Nearly the physical size of Los Angeles, Bukchang housed fifty thousand prisoners who were kept in by, among many other things, a four-meter-high fence. If you were sent here, so was your entire family-the classic definition of guilt by association, which extended to infants, toddlers, teenagers, siblings, spouses, and grandparents. Babies born here shared the same guilt as their families. Unauthorized babies born here, because intercourse and pregnancies were strictly regulated, were killed. Age and personal culpability meant nothing, and a toddler and an ancient grand- mother were treated the same-brutally. — David Baldacci

the first time the caregiver saw it on the child. they said 'no. don't you dare. you will not grow up thinking you are unwanted. because your parents. chose themselves. over you. this will not be your story because it is not the truth. the truth. is your creation is not about them. you came through them, my love, they were your vessel. the truth. is you were born for you. you were wanted by you. you came for you. you are here for you. your existence is yours. yes. you will want them. (and on odd and warm nights they will think of you and hold themselves tighter.) but. what you do not get. from them. does not make you less. does not make you unwanted. (trust that all you did not receive. all you need. will come to you. in time. the universe is infinite.') - a love poem — Nayyirah Waheed

you can lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else, and you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified - and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but now what's in store for me - I have to marry, that goes without saying. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Her lips thinned, but she ignored the bait. "Schedules have been moved up in all departments, you know. Claire received her new reproduction assignment. It didn't include Tony." "Reproduction assignment? You mean, having a baby?" Leo could feel his face flushing. Somewhere within him, a long-controlled steam pressure began to build. "Do you hide what you're really doing from yourselves with those weasel-words, too? And here I thought the propaganda was just for us peons." Yei started to speak, but Leo overrode her, bursting out, "Good God! Were you born inhuman, or did you grow so by degrees - M.S., M.D., Ph.D. . . ." Yei — Lois McMaster Bujold

No, but you're different from the other ponies. Most of them were born and bred here, and this is the only life they know. They were engineered for it, conditioned from birth. They don't know anything else but this kind of a life. — Johnny Stone

He held her face in his hands and his gaze warmed her sadness. "I don't care how you got here. I'm just happy you were born." He rubbed noses with hers. "Real happy. — Selena Robins

If your parents are still alive, call them today and ask them to describe the day you were born. Write the details down here, on the following pages. Tell the story every year on your birthday until you know it by heart. — Amy Poehler

As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from
where she was born, who her parents were. When I asked she'd say, "God made me." When I asked if she was white, she'd say, "I'm light-skinned," and change the subject. She raised twelve black children and sent us all to college and in most cases graduate school. Her children became doctors, professors, chemists, teachers
yet none of us even knew her maiden name until we were grown. It took me fourteen years to unearth her remarkable story
the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, she married a black man in 1942
and she revealed it more as a favor to me than out of any desire to revisit her past. Here is her life as she told it to me, and betwixt and between the pages of her life you will find mine as well. — James McBride

Tell me about yourself."
"Myself?" He looks confused.
"Yes," I say, patting the mattress.
"You know all there is to know," he says, sitting beside me.
"Not true," I say. "Where were you born? What's your favourite season? Anything."
"Here. Florida," he says. "I remember a woman in a red dress with curly brown hair. Maybe she was my mother, I'm not sure. And summer. What about you?" The last part is said with a smile. He smiles so infrequently that I consider each one a trophy. — Lauren DeStefano

Don't be afraid, she tells us. Every end is a beginning. You lived before you were born to me and you will return here after. — Joe Vasicek

Benefits of Being in God's Family The moment you were spiritually born into God's family, you were given some astounding birthday gifts: the family name, the family likeness, family privileges, family intimate access, and the family inheritance!7 The Bible says, "Since you are his child, everything he has belongs to you."8 The New Testament gives great emphasis to our rich "inheritance." It tells us, "My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus."9 As children of God we get to share in the family fortune. Here on earth we are given "the riches ... of his grace ... kindness ... patience ... glory ... wisdom ... power ... and mercy."10 But in eternity we will inherit even more. Paul said, "I want you to realize what a rich and glorious inheritance he has given to his people."11 — Rick Warren

I've been good at this world, the one that hits you when you are born and makes you cry right from the start, so that crying is your first language. I've learned what I was supposed to learn, bu now it comes to me that in doing so I've unlearned other things. I've lost my sense; I cannot sense things. Yes, we are a shambles. And maybe Ama found the way; she found it when all the paths were washed away by rivers from the sky, when all the buildings were blown down by the breath of a God. For just one day, that one day, she found a way out of that shambles, a way around it. And it's this I want to find. But now she has no path back, no way to return even if she wanted to be here in this America. She will always live away from this world, in something of a twilight that is not one thing or the other, one time or the next. She lives in a point, a small point, between two weighted things and it is always rocking this scale, back and forth. — Linda Hogan

here I am simply trying to get into your head
you think you were born you die what a pity — Ikkyu

Can you tell me why I'm here?" "You ran out of sheep to fuck and went looking for some action?" "Gods, I love Camorri. Constitutionally incapable of doing things the easy way." Cortessa slapped Jean hard enough to make his eyes water. "Try again. Why am I here?" "You heard," Jean gasped, "that we'd finally discovered the cure for being born with a face like a stray dog's ass." "No. If that were true you would have used it." Cortessa — Scott Lynch

He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. He was beginning to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow. No one in front of him was moving. He said, This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land
there's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me, we're worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I'd die for, but I'm not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other. — Michael Shaara

Now that you're here, now that they know you exist, you'll never be free again. Ever. We're prisoners to our books, our fates planned long before we were born. You're no different than us. Fight your fate all you want, but deep down you know it's true. — Angela Parkhurst

You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out. — Ernest Cline

Why do I need TV when I have forty-eight apartment windows to watch across the vacant lot, and a sliver of Lake Erie? I've seen history out this window. So much. I was four when we moved here in 1919. The fruit-sellers' carts and coal wagons were pulled down the street by horses back then. I used to stand just here and watch the coal brought up by the handsome lad from Groza, the village my parents were born in. Gibb Street was mainly Rumanians back then. It was "Adio" - "Good-bye"- in all the shops when you left. Then the Rumanians started leaving. They weren't the first, or the last. This has always been a working-class neighborhood. It's like a cheap hotel - you stay until you've got enough money to leave. — Paul Fleischman

The truth is
you were born for you.
you were wanted by you.
you came for you.
you are here for you.
your existence is yours.
yes. — Nayyirah Waheed

Hera: Ohh, Thalia Grace, when I get out of here, you'll be sorry you were ever born.
Thalia: Save it! You've been nothing but a curse to every child of Zeus for ages. You sent a bunch of intestinally challenged cows after my friend Annabeth
Hera: She was disrespectful!
Thalia: You dropped a statue on my legs.
Hera: It was an accident!
Thalia: AND you took my brother — Rick Riordan

You are pure-hearted, Branza, and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart. However sweet that other place was, it was not real. It was an artifact of your mam's imagination; it was a dream of hers and a desire; you could not have stayed there forever and called yourself alive. Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to. (357) — Margo Lanagan

Whatever circumstances you were born into, whatever family life and education you had or didn't have, you came here to make your dreams come true, and no matter where you are now, you are fully equipped with everything you need to do it! — Rhonda Byrne

Don't let "reality" make you lose faith in God and gain faith in Man. Don't put your Joy in man because when man leaves, there goes your Joy. The world didn't give you your joy and the world can't take it away. Your value isn't in the hands of people and your worth was determined when you got here. You were born Gorgeous, but the world will try to convince you otherwise. You're the daughter of the Kings of Kings and your worth extends beyond the clouds. You're a product of LOVE. — Enitan O. Bereola II

I want to correct something I told you once,' she says. 'You asked me once if I thought white people wish that Puerto Rican and black people would just die or go away. I thought it over and I changed my mind. I don't think they wish that we would die. I think they wish that we were never born. Now that we're here, I think they don't know what they ought to do. I think that that's the biggest problem in their minds about poor people.' She adds politely, 'I'm not talkin' about all of the white people. Some of them feel this way. Some of them don't. Some of them don't feel nothin'. Some are nice people but they can't get nothin' done and so they put it out of mind. — Jonathan Kozol

Another year is fast approaching. Go be that starving artist you're afraid to be. Open up that journal and get poetic finally. Volunteer. Suck it up and travel. You were not born here to work and pay taxes. You were put here to be part of a vast organism to explore and create. Stop putting it off. The world has much more to offer than what's on 15 televisions at TGI Fridays. Take pictures. Scare people. Shake up the scene. Be the change you want to see in the world. — Jason Mraz

Just say it, she thought. Say what everyone in this bunker is thinking. Say what we all know to be true. The truth that we are all going to die down here, and death is the end. Nobody wakes up to a heaven or paradise. Your life will be gone. You will be gone. Forever. Uncover the truth. Tear off the bandages of delusion. Open your hearts and minds to the real world. We were doomed the day we were born. We lived and we will die and the only immortals are the people who did something worth remembering while they lived. My genetics are prime. I am pleasing to the eyes of man and machine. A dripping fountain of pleasure. Their organic sanctuary. And in time? Aging. Fading. Graying. What am I? Who am I? What makes me human? Emotions? My conscience? The soul is an old testament myth. No one shall ascend anywhere except into annihilation. The dust of earth and stars are the only eternals, she said. — C.J. Anderson

What have we to offer, really, other than who we are and what God has been pouring into our lives? It was not by accident that you were born; it was not by chance that you have the desires you do. The Victorious Trinity has planned on your being here now, "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14). We need you. — John Eldredge

This [oatmeal] represents your soul in its pure state. Your soul on the day you were born. You were perfect. You were happy. You were good.
Now, enter Concept Number Two: crap. Don't worry, folks. I don't use actual crap up here. Only imaginary crap. You'll have to supply the crap, using your mind. Now, if someone came up and crapped in your nice warm oatmeal, what would you say? Would you say: 'Wow, super, thanks, please continue crapping in my oatmeal'? Am I being silly? I'm being a little silly. But guess what, in real life people come up and crap in your oatmeal all the time
friends, co-workers, loved ones, even you kids, especially your kids!
and that's exactly what you do. You say, 'Thanks so much!' You say, 'Crap away!' You say, and here the metaphor breaks down a bit, 'Is there some way I can help you crap in my oatmeal? — George Saunders

Once you make a conscious connection between your physical personality (what you know as you here in this body) and the Eternal Non-Physical Consciousness (what is really You), you can then get on with the reason you were born into this physical life experience. — Esther

Once, when Tom was over here, to tease Rose, I asked him, "Before she was born, can you remember? Were things just the same as they are these days? Did it still rain and get dark and all the stuff it does now? Did the sun go up and down in exactly the same way?"
Yes," Tom said, and then he smiled at Rose and said, "No. Not really. Not exactly the same way. — Hilary McKay

Now, for some of you it doesn't matter. You were born rich and you're going to stay rich. But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget it. Thank you. — Bill Murray

This view of a living nature where man is nothing is both odd and sad. Here, in a fertile land, in an eternal greenness, you search in vain for traces of man; you feel you are carried into a different world from the one you were born into. — Alexander Von Humboldt

He's not like anything. He's a person who just happens to have been born with something he can't control. It could have happened to you. It could have happened to any of us. So the next time you see someone in a chair, someone spastic, just imagine if that were you! The same you who's standing here now, but your mind's been trapped inside a body you can't control! — Judy Blume

You're no different. You came into this world as an answer to a prayer, a solution to a need. If there was no need for you, you never would've shown up. The fact that you were born is the guarantee that you have a reason for being here. There's something you came to give - a gift, a talent, a message, a meaning. The world needs you to be you. — Derek Rydall

Of every aspect of the moor, the earth and stone and rain and fire, the wind is the strongest one in Near. Here on the outskirts of the village, the wind is always pressing close, making windows groan. It whispers and it howls and it sings. It can bend its voice and cast it into any shape, long and thin enough to slide beneath the door, stout enough to seem a thing of weight and breath and bone. The wind was here when you were born, when I was born, when our house was built, when the Council was formed, and even when the Near Witch lived, — Victoria Schwab

In 1983, after my son, Salvador, was born, I visited Cihuatlan, my dad's hometown in Mexico with my dad. I met a lady there who told me, "Carlos, I grew up with Don Jose'. (dad) We were from the same generation. I want you to know that you might be recognized around the world, but here Don Jose' is the Santana that counts." My dad just looked at me. I smiled and said, "Hey that's fine with me. — Carlos Santana

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,
call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again? — A.E. Housman

19. Everything is here for a purpose, from horses to vine shoots. What's surprising about that? Even the sun will tell you, "I have a purpose," and the other gods as well. And why were you born? For pleasure? See if that answer will stand up to questioning. — Marcus Aurelius

Maybe it should just make you feel lucky. Yeah, you were really lucky you didn't die after the accident. But you were a lot luckier to be born in the first place. So if you're here for a reason, maybe we all are. — Rebecca Stead

Cameron," Abby said in a whisper. "There are deer in the yard!" "Really?" he asked. "Why are you whispering? Can they hear you?" "I don't want to scare them off. Oh, I wish you were here. There's a baby. And a couple of deer look ready to pop. Not as ready as I look, but wild animals probably don't get this big." He laughed into the phone. "I told you, you're perfect." "If you'd been home another half hour, you'd have seen them. Cameron, there are six of them." "Any bucks?" "Just the mamas. And one baby." "That's a fawn," he said. "It looks like it's barely born. He's wobbling on his legs. Oh, I wish you could see him." He — Robyn Carr

We were also born," Line said abruptly. Mendel questioned her with a look, and Line tried to clarify her thought: "Born, expelled. Russia conceived us, nourished us, made us grow in her darkness, as in a womb; then she had labor pains, contractions, and threw us out; and now here we are, naked and new, like babies just born. Isn't it the same for you?"
"Narische meidele, vos darst do freden?" Mendel rebutted, feeling on his lips and affectionate smile and a light veil over his eyes. — Primo Levi

I was getting away with something in my own way. But then I get here and saw you, brain-dead and with tubes coming out of every part of your body. And I realized I wasn't getting away with anything. Just like you didn't get away with anything. You were just born, fucked around for a while, got hit by a car and died, and that's your whole life story right there. You don't win by getting through all you life not having done anything. — John Scalzi

Think back for a moment on your own history
not just where you were born or where you grew up, but the circumstances that contributed to your being right here, right now. What were the moments along the way that wounded or scared you? Chances are, you've had a few. But here's what's remarkable: You are still here, still standing. — Oprah Winfrey

It is easy when you are successful to think that you did it all by yourself and to forget that you didn't. You got here because a lot of things broke your way. You were lucky enough to be born into a family that could afford to take care of you well. — Elizabeth Warren

This universe is your abode; you were born here and with an abundance. — Debasish Mridha

Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to. — Margo Lanagan