I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me — they, and the love and loyaty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.

It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.

In the end, all that really matters — all you really have — is the people you love. Not your job, not your career, not your awards, not your money, not your stuff. Just your people.

You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not... No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me.

If you have it [love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.

It's true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them.

The people who have a strong sense of love and belonging, BELIEVE they are worthy of love and belonging.

Of this, I am actually certain. After collecting thousands of stories, I’m willing to call this a fact: A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all women, men, and children. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

The hunger to belong is at the heart of our nature. Cut off from others, we atrophy and turn in on ourselves. The sense of belonging is the natural balance of our lives. Mostly, we do not need to make an issue of belonging. When we belong, we take it for granted. There is some innocent childlike side to the human heart that is always deeply hurt when we are excluded. Belonging suggests warmth, understanding, and embrace. No one was created for isolation. When we become isolated, we are prone to being damaged; our minds lose their flexibility and natural kindness; we become vulnerable to fear and negativity. The sense of belonging keeps you in balance amidst the inner and outer immensities. The ancient and eternal values of human life — truth, unity, goodness, justice, beauty, and love are all statements of true belonging; they are the also the secret intention and dream of human longing.

You dont have to live anywhere other than the place you are to start connecting with the world you want to be in.

In love, we don’t need everyone to want us. We only need one person.

My home is not a place, it is people.

Without love, there is no reason to know anyone, for love will in the end connect us to our neighbors, our children and our hearts.

Is it possible really to love other people? If I’m lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief — I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn’t a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else’s needs that I can’t even feel directly? And yet if I can’t do this, I’m damned to loneliness, which I definitely don’t want … so I’m back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.