Quotes from A Long Way Home

272 pages

Rating: (33.2K votes)


“My mother described her reactions better than I ever could mine: she said she was "surprised with thunder" that her boy had come back, and that the happiness in her heart was "as deep as the sea".”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“I feel strongly that from my being a little lost boy with no family to becoming a man with two, everything was meant to happen just the way it happened. And I am profoundly humbled by that thought.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“My return seemed to inspire and energize the neighborhood, as though it was evidence that the hard luck of life did not have to rule you. Sometimes miracles do happen.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“Not having enough to eat paralyzes you and keeps you living hour by hour instead of thinking about what you would like to accomplish in a day, week, month, or year. Hunger and poverty steal your childhood and take away your innocence and sense of security. But”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“We all reach a point as young adults when we wonder what we should be doing with our lives—or, at the very least, which direction to point ourselves in. Beyond the means to get by, we need to think about what’s most important to us. Not surprisingly, I discovered that for me the answer was family.”
― quote from A Long Way Home



“I’d had to learn some of these differences, too. Mum remembers taking me somewhere in the car once when I looked at her and said, “Lady no drive.” She pulled over and said, “If lady no drive, then boy walk!” I quickly learned my lesson.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“She also said she was proud of me, which is all anyone can wish to hear from his mother. The”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“Mum had decided that there was nothing sacrosanct about families formed only by birth parents. Though brought up Catholic, she and Dad thought the world had enough children born into it already, with many millions of them in dire need. They agreed that there were other ways to create a family beyond having children themselves.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“I’d learned quickly, as a matter of survival, that I needed to take opportunities as they came—if they came—and to look forward to the future.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“carrying laborer to teacher and manager. It seems a bittersweet result of the family’s loss that the remaining children had managed to lift themselves out of poverty.”
― quote from A Long Way Home



“Sometimes it felt as if the world had forgotten about us and our problems.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“One of the most touching things my mother said to me was that if I ever wanted to come back to live in India, she would build me a home and go out and work hard so that I could be happy.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“Hunger and poverty steal your childhood and take away your innocence and sense of security. But I was one of the lucky ones because I not only survived but learned to thrive. •”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“I was about to embark on a high-tech version of what I'd done in my first week there, twenty years ago, randomly taking trains out to see if they went back home. I took a deep breath, chose a train line, and started scrolling along it.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“was a juvenile detention centre, called Liluah, housing”
― quote from A Long Way Home



“birdwatching or sailing. Dad often took me out on his small catamaran, which only increased my love of the water, and I finally learned to swim. Just being able to look out at the horizon gave me peace of”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“Adoptees, whether or not they ever knew their birth parents, often describe the constant, gnawing feeling of there being something missing: without a connection, or at least the knowledge of where they are from, they feel incomplete.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“Just the thought of being able to ask for more food with the expectation of receiving it made me happy and built up my excitement to an almost unbearable pitch. It seemed that we were about to embark on the adventure of our lives. •”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“The idea of having possessions took some getting used to.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“For the first time, I told Mum that the place I was from was called “Ginestlay,” and when”
― quote from A Long Way Home



“Hunger limits you because you are constantly thinking about getting food, keeping the food if you do get your hands on some, and not knowing when you are going to eat next.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“imagined what I’d do when I reached this stage. It now seems absurd, but I suppose I thought I’d find a town labelled ‘Ginestlay’ and that would be that; I’d know I’d found home. But nothing else had worked out as I thought it would – this town was well outside my search boundary, and after all my careful planning and methodical efforts I’d found it by accident. It”
― quote from A Long Way Home


“Van toen af aan heb ik gedacht dat we huilen omdat ons lichaam iets probeert te verwerken wat ons hart en verstand te veel is.”
― quote from A Long Way Home


Popular quotes

“How is it possible to feel such a strong connection with somebody but miss the most vital piece of information about him?”
― Dahlia Adler, quote from Just Visiting


“I’d fought like hell to keep the upper hand between us to protect her, to keep her out of the path of those who would hurt one to destroy the other. I couldn’t lose control and risk losing something more important—the one person who’d come into my life and made it worth living.”
― Meredith Wild, quote from Hard Limit


“I want something that makes people strong and energetic for the present, that borrows the strength of to-morrow for use to-day—leaving to-morrow without any at all for that matter; or even that would take all life away to-morrow, so long as it enabled me to get home again now.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from A Pair of Blue Eyes


“Rich or poor, all come full of devotion and with no inner misgivings to lay their offerings before the gods and to pray for their blessing. Is there any people so uniformly attached to their religion and so obedient to it in their daily life? I have always envied the Tibetans their simple faith, for all my life I have been a seeker. Though I learned, while in Asia, the way to meditate, the final answer to the riddle of life has not been vouchsafed to me. But I have at least learned to contemplate the events of life with tranquility and not let myself be flung to and fro by circumstances in a sea of doubt.”
― Heinrich Harrer, quote from Seven Years in Tibet (Paladin Books)


“A él le parecía que Gertrudis se había convertido con los años en una especie de mueble, que había dejado de ser una persona viviente.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Time of the Hero


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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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