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Displacement Quotes

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Displacement Quotes

“In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, "Those are our people, so you are our people." It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone. "But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.”

CommunityFamilyRespectFamily RelationshipsAncestryDisplacementSri LankaImmigration Experience
Book:What Lies Between Us
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“Nabokov famously never had a home. In the United States he and his wife, Vera, always rented. At Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he taught for a decade, they occupied homes vacated by professors on sabbatical. The Nabokovs ended their days in a small suite of rooms at the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland. When asked to explain his peripatetic life of exile, Nabokov said, “Nothing short of a replica of my childhood surroundings would have satisfied me.” His hero Pushkin was a wanderer, too, exiled from St. Petersburg by the czar for years at a time. Like Nabokov, “To the end of his life he remained deeply attached to what he considered his real home, the Lyceum, and to his former fellow students.”

HomeNostalgiaDisplacement
Book:The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the End of a Beautiful Friendship
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“I know how it feels to be someplace you no longer belong, or to no longer be in the place you do belong, because that place has ceased to exist. I know what it’s like to be robbed of your foundation walls, how difficult it becomes to stand firm or stand at all, to provide others with protection. It’s impossible to imagine; it must be experienced, although best avoided. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.”

HomePlaceDisplacementEstrangementDisplaced
Book:Pollaks Arm
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“I likewise enjoyed the melancholy nature of the farewell party. I had a seat in history's waiting room: one train had just been shunted to an abandoned platform; the other was due in at any moment and would set off again after a brief halt. Not everyone who alighted from the first train would find a place in the second; many would remain in the waiting room, watching the snack bar close, the heating and lights go off. But as long as the old train was still out there and the new one still on its way, the snack bar was still open and everything was warm and brightly lit. (139-40)”

LifeWaitingHistoryFarewellEndingsDisplacement
Book:Homecoming
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“The poet must rethink her writing activities in such a way as to désoublier (to unforget), détaire (to unsilence), déterrer (to unbury), se désaveugler (to unbind), se dessourdier (to undeafen), in an endeavor to displace all that has been repressed, incorporated, appropriated. This is the poet’s way of fighting.”

WritingPoetryFightingFreedomPoetsDisplacementReclamation
Book:Hélène Cixous: Writing the Feminine
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“You big ugly. You too empty. You desert with your nothing nothing nothing. You scorched suntanned. Old too quickly. Acres of suburbs watching the telly. You bore me. Freckle silly children. You nothing much. With your big sea. Beach beach beach. I’ve seen enough already. You dumb dirty city with bar stools. You’re ugly. You silly shopping town. You copy. You too far everywhere. You laugh at me. When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be friendly but you’re not very friendly. You never ask me to your house. You insult me. You don’t know how to be with me. Road road tree tree. I came from crowded and many. I came from rich. You have nothing to offer. You’re poor and spread thin. You big. So what. I’m small. It’s what’s in. You silent on Sunday. Nobody on your streets. You dead at night. You go to sleep too early. You don’t excite me. You scare me with your hopeless. Asleep when you walk. Too hot to think. You big awful. You don’t match me. You burnt out. You too big sky. You make me a dot in the nowhere. You laugh with your big healthy. You want everyone to be the same. You’re dumb. You do like anybody else. You engaged Doreen. You big cow. You average average. Cold day at school playing around at lunchtime. Running around for nothing. You never accept me. For your own. You always ask me where I’m from. You always ask me. You tell me I look strange. Different. You don’t adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak. You think you’re better than me. You don’t like me. You don’t have any interest in another country. Idiot centre of your own self. You think the rest of the world walks around without shoes or electric light. You don’t go anywhere. You stay at home. You like one another. You go crazy on Saturday night. You get drunk. You don’t like me and you don’t like women. You put your arm around men in bars. You’re rough. I can’t speak to you. You burly burly. You’re just silly to me. You big man. Poor with all your money. You ugly furniture. You ugly house. You relaxed in your summer stupor. All year. Never fully awake. Dull at school. Wait for other people to tell you what to do. Follow the leader. Can’t imagine. Workhorse. Thick legs. You go to work in the morning. You shiver on a tram.”

PoetryCitiesImmigrationDesertBeachAustraliaCultural DifferencesDisplacementProse PoetryProse Poem
Author:Ania Walwicz
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“for Falasteen the boy i adored at sixteen gifted me his keffiyeh feeling guilty for living when others were killed simply for existing i haven’t seen him in sixteen years but think of him often these days his grandmother’s purse still carrying keys to their home believing they’d return in weeks can it even be called a key if what it unlocked is no longer there? we’d sneak onto mall rooftops & pretend shooting only happened with stars! 'we have a duty of memory,' he said, 'so they’ll kill us all until only the soil is witness' how could i reply? i sat in my liquid silence today there are nurseries of martyrs they bomb babies for they fear enemies hiding between pacifiers & tiny wrists bomb hospitals because enemies hide in ICU bedpans bomb schools because enemies hide in children’s bags bomb the oldest mosques & churches because enemies hide in rosary beads & votive candles they bomb journalists because enemies are hiding under their PRESS vests & helmets bomb poets because enemies hide in pages of peace poems the elderly are bombed because enemies hide under their canes the disabled are bombed because they harbour enemies in their artificial limbs they raze & burn all the ancient trees because enemies make bombs from olives they bomb water treatment plants because enemies are now water & so it goes: justification provided exoneration granted business as usual & the boy I adored has green-grey eyes the colour of fig leaves we don’t speak but i wish to tell him 'i’m sorry the world is a blade i’m sorry home is blood & bones i’m sorry music is sirens & wails i’m sorry night is infinite' but the boy I adored has grey-green eyes the colour of forgotten ash”

WarOppressionWitnessGenocidePalestineApartheidGazaDisplacementCeasefireKeffiyeh
Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“Spices" The scents of spices are sad whether at home or in foreign lands ... At home, they passes through the nose to give a ray of hope, a breathing space that make us forget – albeit for a short while – all about the chains of religions, gossip, the absurdity of politics, and the cruelty of the ruling classes … At home, spices help us cope with the heavy weight of the backbreaking customs and traditions … You see everyone excited to have a meal that help them forget about the hardships, the crises, and the unsuitability of life at home … In alienating foreign lands, The scent of spices awakens everything that was lost, including the lost lands and homes… There is something unbearably sad about the image of a woman Standing in a kitchen filled with scents of spices reminding her of all that happened, all that was possible, all that should never have happened, and of all the irreplaceable losses … So many are the societies that have been completely destroyed, and of which nothing remains but scents of spices that add flavor to foods and marinate the wounds … Could spices be like old songs? We love them at home because they touch wounds we wish we could heal from, the same old songs break our hearts in foreign lands, because by then we have finally learned that exile doesn’t heal wounds, but rather pushes the knife deeper into them … And like the alienating foreign lands, the scents of spices declare that there is much more to the story of the wound; a story that kills if untold, and doesn’t heal when narrated … [Original poem published in Arabic on December 11, 2023 at ahewar.org]”

CultureLossDestructionExileAlienationSpicesScentsArabic PoetryDisplacementForeign Lands
Author:Louis Yako
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“The Involuntary Princeling by Stewart Stafford The candle's blaze grows distant fast, Quenched to an ember spark, unseen, Carriage taken in larceny's grasp, Darkness made far bank unclean. Daubing a sovereign slogan, In violet shadows unmasked, A delinquent reunion reprieved, A doggerel name outcast. Trade winds howl to storming, As fireballs 'neath seas seek to atone, The red-crowned crest now stakes its claim, On writhed Rosetta's key stone. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”

PowerChildhoodIdentitySeparationIronyRoyaltyFamily DramaDisplacementCustodyBiographical
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Post-apocalyptic world will never unfold like in the movies, the post-apocalyptic world already exists, may be not for you, as you're born on the lucky side of privilege - but that world of drought, flood, famine, plague and persecution already exists - ten steps from the door of the privileged.”

Social JusticeInequalityOccupationGenocideTotalitarianismFamineDisparityHuman Rights ViolationDisplacementGlobal Goals
Book:Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience
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“I should have seen it coming.” The words don’t surprise me, but they piss me off. I pull away and glare down at her. “Don’t you fucking dare, Nell Hawthorne. Don’t you dare put this on yourself. You should never have to see shit like this coming.” She backs away, stunned and afraid by the intensity I know is radiating off me. “Colton, I just meant he’s always shown—” “Stop. Just stop right there. Granted, you should’ve never gotten involved with a douchetard like him, but that’s no excuse for what he did.”

PainSadShameBlameGuiltDenialRapeSelf LoathingFallingDisplacementColtonFalling Into YouJasinda WilderNellNell Hawthorne
Author:Jasinda Wilder
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“When those who had been evicted went back to where they came from, they found their villages had disappeared under great dams and dusty quarries. Their homes were occupied by hunger-and policemen. The forests were filling up with armed guerrillas. They found that the wars from the edge of India, in Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur, had migrated to its heart. People returned to live on city streets and pavements, in hovels on dusty construction sites, wondering which corner of this huge country was meant for them.”

WarDisplacementEconomic Inequality
Book:Capitalism: A Ghost Story
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“This arrogant, conceited history strides with her head in the clouds and never looks down. She does not realize how she crushes millions of people beneath her feet. The common people. She doesn't understand that one may cut a mountain in two, but people? It's a hard task, Bhai, to cute one people in two. They bleed." A deep sigh coursed through the gathering. Master Fazal said, "History will keep on marching like this. The names of a few people will stick to her fabric. She will register those. there was Hitler, there was Mussolini, Churchill and Joseph Stalin, among others. this time the names maybe Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jinnah, Subhash Bose! But the names of the lakhs and crores who have lost their lives will be nowhere. They will be mere numbers in which all of us will be included!".”

WarHistoryIndiaPakistanRefugeesBloodshedDisplacementPartition1947
Book:Two
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“We must remember that refugees are almost always people whose homes, family members, and everything they once loved and held dear are either destroyed or seriously at stake…They are simply trapped in a zone in which staying under such circumstances and swallowing humiliation in the “host” countries is unbearable; going home is impossible, because often there is no 'home' to go to anymore; and going elsewhere is rarely an option either. This is precisely what “trapped” feels like.”

WarViolenceImmigrationRefugeesDisplacementRefugee CrisisImmigrant Experience
Author:Louis Yako
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“The first problem with the “how can we help the refugees” question is the question itself. The premise of the question is flawed and problematic at two levels: first, it draws a clear boundary in power relations by assuming more power to the ‘we’, the Western people doing the ‘helping’, and therefore simultaneously grants them the power of choosing to deny refugees this ‘help’, if so they choose.”

WarDevelopmentImmigrationHumanitarianismRefugeesDisplacementRefugee CrisisImmigrant Experience
Author:Louis Yako
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“Should we then be surprised that when Western powers destroy a certain country that there will be an influx of refugees? Do we expect these wars to happen and for their effects to simply stay 'over there'? How can we really expect all this to happen while people here carry on doing business as usual? Do Westerners expect to just relax and enjoy a cold crisp beer on their porches on a warm summer night and see no refugees before their eyes after all these wars waged by their governments?”

WarViolenceImmigrationPropagandaRefugeesWar CrimesDisplacementRefugee CrisisImmigrant Experience
Author:Louis Yako
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“The intimate relationship between the military-industrial-complex and the refugee-industrial complex is that they serve each other by first destroying nations and controlling their resources; and second by bringing to the West cheap laborers who do both menial and highly skilled work. This means that the system benefits from the victims twice: once by destroying their nations and stealing their resources, and twice by capitalizing on their labor and skills. More ironically, refugees often make ideal consumers for goods produced and promoted by the same corporations and warmongers who destroyed their countries, lives, histories, and memories forever.”

WarIllusionPropagandaExileRefugeesMisinformationDisplacementMilitary Industrial Complex
Author:Louis Yako
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“A refugee is someone who was forcefully taken out of their time and place. They were then placed in another time and another place that insist on dehumanizing them. It is a tragedy. The ultimate paradox and irony of this tragedy is that, in many cases, those who caused their displacement and those who hate them in their newfound ‘homes’ in exile are the same people! In this way, they leave no place for a refugee to feel at home or even alive.”

WarInspirational QuotesViolenceConflictHumanitarianismIraq WarRefugeesDisplacementMilitary Industrial ComplexAsylum
Author:Louis Yako
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“Over the years, I have grown to love airports, despite all the travel inconveniences which are getting worse every year. I don’t know why I have this strong desire to depart; to always be somewhere else. Maybe getting displaced and being forced out of my home as a result of war has turned me into a permanent nomad? Since I left Iraq for the first time in 2005, I almost always have a plane, bus, or train ticket to go somewhere. Sometimes I think of the mothers who abandon their unwanted babies at the doors of churches and mosques. I imagine that my mother, too, had left me at the door of an airport with a plane ticket instead of a pacifier in my mouth! And since then, I have been moving everywhere and arriving nowhere. Could it be that disillusion takes place precisely at the moment we arrive at a certain destination?”

TravelBordersExploringAirportsTravel WritingGypsyMobilityDisplacementNomadic Life
Author:Louis Yako
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“Most of the institutions that come in to offer help after disaster don't have the resources to provide concrete help. . . . Donor communities invest billions funding peace talks and disarmament. Then they stop. The most important part of postwar help is missing: providing basic social services to people. Not having those resources might have been a reason men went to war in the first place; they crossed a border and joined an armed group because they didn't have jobs. In Liberia right now, there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people, and they're ready-made mercenaries for wars in West Africa. You'd think the international community would be sensible enough to know they should work to change this. But they aren't.”

CulturePeaceInternational RelationsDisplacementSocial ServicesPostwarInternational AidResource AllocationRelief Work
Book:Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War
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“Dead and mutilated bodies, famine, and citizens handicapped by economic sanctions are all part of the warlords’ bartering chips for seizing power and securing valuable concessions. Many proud nations of indigenous people perished in battle for control of lands that rightfully did not belong to the army bearing superior forces. No army returns territory it took, unless compelled to do so by hard costs. The meek might inherit the earth someday, but for now the most aggressive and ruthless armies control the turf.”

WarArmyWarningWarfareViolence Against WomenRefugeesBattlesDisplacementBattlefieldTurf Wars
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“The crust [of the earth] is very thin. Estimates of its thickness range from a minimum of about twenty to a maximum of about forty miles. The crust is made of comparatively rigid, crystalline rock, but it is fractured in many places, and does not have great strength. Immediately under the crust is a layer that is thought to be extremely weak, because it is, presumably, too hot to crystallize. Moreover, it is thought that pressure at that depth renders the rock extremely plastic, so that it will yield easily to pressures. The rock at that depth is supposed to have high viscosity; that is, it is fluid but very stiff, as tar may be. It is known that a viscous material will yield easily to a comparatively slight pressure exerted over a long period of time, even though it may act as a solid when subjected to a sudden pressure, such as an earthquake wave. If a gentle push is exerted horizontally on the earth's crust, to shove it in a given direction, and if the push is maintained steadily for a long time, it is highly probable that the crust willl be displaced over this plastic and viscous lower layer. The crust, in this case, will move as a single unit, the whole crust at the same time. This idea has nothing whatever to do with the much discussed theory of drifting continents, according to which the continents drifted separately, in different directions. [...] Let us visualize briefly the consequences of a displacement of the whole crustal shell of the earth. First, there will be the changes in latitude. Places on the earth's surface will change their distances from the equator. Some will be shifted nearer the equator, and others farther away. Points on opposite sides of the earth will move in opposite directions. For example, if New York should be moved 2,000 miles south, the Indian Ocean, diametrically opposite, would have to be shifted 2,000 miles north. [...] Naturally, climatic changes will be more or less proportionate to changes in latitude, and, because areas on opposite sides of the globe will be moving in opposite directions, some areas will be getting colder while others get hotter; some will be undergoing radical changes of climate, some mild changes of climate, and some no changes at all. Along with the climatic changes, there will be many other consequences of a displacement of the crust. Because of the slight flattening of the earth, there will be stretching and compressional effects to crack and fold the crust, possibly contributing to the formation of mountain ranges. there will be changes in sea level, and many other consequences.”

PressureConsequencesEarthquakesDisplacementCrackCrustFracturesViscosity
Book:Earth's Shifting Crust: A Key To Some Basic Problems Of Earth Science
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“Hand Watches” I opened the drawer where I store old keepsakes and tokens. My eyes paused on hand watches with dead batteries, frozen in time… Gifts from teachers and friends— offered to honor my accomplishments, to praise my respect for time. It never occurred to them, or to me, that Time could die of a heart attack— that it would cease to matter the day my homeland was occupied and destroyed. The day the plunderers —both foreign and within— colluded to burn and erase all that was beautiful. Since then, I’ve refused to wear hand watches, and I never will until my people reclaim their Time and dignity. And when that day comes, Time will no longer matter. For then, I will become— a butterfly, a sparrow, a daffodil or an orange blossom, perhaps an apricot blossom on a branch, an unstoppable stream of water flowing beyond time and timing. In that same drawer, I found pens that had run dry, like mummified corpses. In a moment of despair, a lightning bolt of realization struck me— leaving behind a terrifying question: What if this is a wound that no amount of time can heal— a cause so vast that all the world’s ink cannot write its cure?”

WarTimeLossExileInvasionRefugeesColonizationArabic PoetryDisplacementArabic Literature
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“Before you hate refugees, remember that ideally, most people wish to live peacefully and with their dignity intact. Remember that many of these refugees would rather come to you as ‘tourists’ with cameras in their hands under much better circumstances rather than as people with no options but to put up with the hate and humiliation awaiting them in the often not so hospitable ‘host’ counties. Before you protest refugees, protest your governments that are either intervening militarily in their countries or arming different groups and factions in their territories to kill each other. The refugee crisis is a deeply political crisis for all actors involved. Before you go in the streets demanding ‘no more refugees,’ rest assured, that these people would never have chosen to come all the way here to take your menial job offers while see you protest their very human existence. Likewise, before you extend your benevolence to these refugees by ‘tolerating’ them, as if doing them a favor, remember, that you actually can really love them because there is so much you can learn from their stories. There is so much work that can be accomplished when you hold hands with these refugees towards mutual human goals.”

WarHatePoliticsForeign PolicySolidarityRefugeesDecolonizationDisplacementRefugee Crisis
Author:Louis Yako
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