Emigration Quotes

“Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“History shows that it is not only senseless and cruel, but also difficult to state who is a foreigner.”
― Claudio Magris, Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea

“The question of the stranger in a society which estranges everybody from it--while forcing everybody to assimilate their own alienation--takes cover under dubious and sinister masks.”
― Norman Manea

“I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before.”
― Isabel Allende, Paula

“I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark. Home is the barrel of a gun. No one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore. No one would leave home until home is a voice in your ear saying--leave, run, now. I don't know what I've become.”
― Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

“Does anyone ever
want to leave their home?
The fresh fruit that drops from their backyard?

The neighbors who wiped their snot?
Does anyone ever
want to believe they won't come back?

To the dog that sniffs their heel,
to the bed that holds the echo of their body?
Is there relief in pretending it is temporary,

that one day it will be safe? That I will once again
wave to the kind school bus driver;
that I'll hold Carline's baby before he grows,

having never known me? They have no palm
trees in New York City, no leaves to shade me,
to brush against my cheeks like my mother's hands.

There is no one over there, alive or buried,
who held me as a child, who cradled me close,
who fed me from their table, who wiped my knees when

I fell & scraped them. Here, despite the bad & ugly,
is my home. & now I wish that I could stay. Does anyone ever
want to leave the place they love?”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“Die Emigration kann ein Zeichen der Stärke oder der Schwäche einer Nation sein.”
― Ismail Kadare

“There is no destination other than towards yet another refuge from yet another war. Many generations pass and many deceptions in the sequence in the chronology towards the destination.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

“Wealthy Individuals from poor nations emigrate to affluent societies, only to become impoverished within those prosperous nations.”
― Isaiah Senones

“For me, therapy is partly translation therapy, the talking cure a second-language cure. My going to a shrink is, among other things, a rite of initiation: initiation into the language of the subculture within which I happen to live, into a way of explaining myself to myself. But gradually, it becomes a project of translating backward.
The way to jump over my Great Divine is to crawl backward over it in English. It's only when I retell my whole story, back to the beginning, and from the beginning onward, in one language, that I can reconcile the voices within me with each other; it is only then that the person who judges the voices and tells the stories begins to emerge.”
― Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language

“Dear God: Emigration is a loss of dignity and a form of humiliation, while staying here is hell. Dear God: Where should we go?”
― Ruqia Hasan

“You only leave home when home won't let you stay.”
― Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

“- Le drame, vois-tu, c'est que beaucoup d'entre nous ne peuvent vivre ni dans leur patrie, ni à l'étranger.
- Alors que leurs reste-t-il?
- Le malheur.”
― Michel Tournier, La Goutte d'or

“They opened a place in Irishness for the diasporas that were, in many ways, the truest products of its history. It brought home the reality that had been obscured in the idea of emigration as tragedy and shame: we are a hyphenated people.”
― Fintan O'Toole, We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland

“Der Schiff rüstete sich zur Fahrt, als wäre es eine Arche zur Zeit der Sintflut. Es war eine Arche. Jedes Schiff, das in diesen Monaten des Jahres 1940 Europa verließ, war eine Arche. Der Berg Ararat war Amerika, und die Flut stieg täglich.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon

“Da unten war der Fluss, und der Fluss war die Freiheit, er war das Leben, er mündete in das Meer, und das Meer war Amerika.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon

“Wir gingen langsam die Straße mit den Treppen hinunter. Die blassen Häuser schliefen aneinandergelehnt. Aus den Fenstern hörte man das Seufzen, Schnarchen und Atmen von Leuten, die keine Passsorgen hatten. Unsere Schritte klangen lauter als am Tage.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon

“Bis zum Concorde. Da lag die Amerikanische Botschaft. Weiß unter den Sternen, still und leer, eine Arche Noah, in der es Stempel für Visa gab, unerreichbar.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

“My father moaned at the dinner table about the huge toll that emigration was having on his undertaking business. 'Everyone's gone somewhere else to die,' he'd say.”
― Colum McCann, Fishing the Sloe-Black River

“Mi-a povestit și Adrian Enescu - la o lansare a venit unul să-i zică: «Nu ești, bă, așa mare, că dacă erai mare fugeai în Vest...», la care Adrian, care nu era genul să se joace, i-a dat un cap în gură, de l-a băgat în spital... «Cum adică, bă, dacă nu fug afară sunt ratat?»”
― Dan Andrei Aldea

“It’s that time of the year when I yearn to reunite with my soul, that hapless wanderer. That part of me which resides in an exalted state in the ancient kingdom of Ojoto. A place where my beloved soul saunters unchecked, whispering my name in the quietness of the night, whistling same with the wind, and yelling it during thunderstorms. Since my prolonged absence, it mumbles and sobs for me, a titular truant.”
― Fidelis O. Mkparu

“Я змирився, закрив зошит із номерами телефонів і подумав про всіх тих, що протягом останнього десятиліття змогли виїхати з країни. Ті, хто мали дипломи чи вміли робити щось корисне, скористалися своїм шансом. Нова Зеландія, ніби Джек-Різник, завжди шукала нових молодих жертв; гаряча і незаселена Австралія імпортуванням мізків програмістів лікувала комплекс другосортної Англії; холодна Канада, наче вампір, прагнула молодої крові інженерів; омріяна Америка шляхом керованої лотереї на отримання зеленої карти вибирала найкращі біографії тих, що були готові добровільно покласти свою молодість на вівтар її невпинного економічного поступу; європейське подвір’я завжди тримало відчиненою дерев’яну браму найгарнішої і найздоровнішої живності, вирощеної на якісному концентраті східної системи освіти.”
― Zvonko Karanović, Tri slike pobede

“The girl finally confesses: her brother has decided to go across the border, secretly, illegally; by tomorrow he will be out of the country.

What? Her brother wants to abandon our young socialist republic? Her brother wants to betray the revolution? Her brother wants to become an emigre? Doesn't she realize what being an emigre means? Doesn't she realize that every emigre automatically becomes an agent of the foreign espionage services that are trying to destroy our country?”
― Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere

“To love a country as if you’ve lost one: as if
it were you on a plane departing from America
forever, clouds closing like curtains on your country,
the last scene in which you’re a madman scribbling
the names of your favorite flowers, trees, and birds
you’d never see again, your address and phone number
you’d never use again, the color of your father’s eyes,
your mother’s hair, terrified you could forget these.
To love a country as if I was my mother last spring
hobbling, insisting I help her climb all the way up
to the U.S. Capitol, as if she were here before you today
instead of me, explaining her tears, cheeks pink
as the cherry blossoms coloring the air that day when
she stopped, turned to me, and said: You know, mijo,
it isn’t where you’re born that matters, it’s where
you choose to die—that’s your country.”
― Richard Blanco, How to Love a Country

“И передо мной, естественно, как перед всяким “изгнанником” (по Ахматовой) вставал выбор меж двумя ценностями — родина иль свобода? Не задумываясь, я взял свободу, ибо родина без свободы уж не родина, а свобода без родины, хоть и очень тяжела, может быть, даже страшна, но все-таки — моя свобода.. Так что “надменные строки” Ахматовой о каком-то “изгнаннике” меня всегда необыкновенно отталкивали.”
― Роман Гуль

“И все-таки мне почему-то даже нравится эта страшностъ моего эмигрантского положения. Может быть потому, что я, в сущности, где-то в своей глубине именно и хочу быть “вне общества”, “вне государства”, а быть в вечном странствии. И потому как бы ни была тяжела эта “страшная вещь” эмиграция — а она, конечно, бывает тяжела, — именно ее-то я и восхваляю. В этой свободе нищеты, свободе человека — именно она давала мне глубокие переживания счастья “остаться самим собой”. А это, может быть, даже самое большое человеческое счастье — быть эмигрантом не только из своей родной страны, превращенной в Дантов ад, но быть вообще эмигрантом на земле, еле соприкасаясь со всем тем, что тебя окружает.”
― Роман Гуль, Я унес Россию

“A civilized world is not where everybody flocks to another nation to fulfill their dream, but where everybody can pursue their dream without feeling the need to become an immigrant.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“Однак канадський Департамент праці в 1948 році відмовляв усім дівчатам та жінкам, які подавали заявки на еміграцію до Канади, щоб влаштуватися хатньої прислугою, якщо мав бодай якусь підозру, що заявниці мають освіту вище середньої.”
― Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

“No one would choose to crawl under fences, beaten until your shadow leaves, raped, forced off the boat because you are darker, drowned, sold, starved, shot at the border like a sick animal, pitied. No one would choose to make a refugee camp home for a year or two or ten, stripped and searched, finding prison everywhere. And if you were to survive, greeted on the other side--Go home Blacks, dirty refugees, sucking our country dry of milk, dark with their hands out, smell strange, savage, look what they've done to their own countries, what will they do to ours?”
― Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

“Leaving is a kind of death. You may find yourself with much less than you had before. It seemed to Mauro that in choosing to emigrate, we are the ones trafficking ourselves.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country