Homecoming Quotes

“Home's where you go when you run out of homes.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
― Robert Frost

“Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.”
― Charles Dickens

“Returning home is the most difficult part of long-distance hiking; You have grown outside the puzzle and your piece no longer fits.”
― Cindy Ross

“When time passes, it's the people who knew you whom you want to see; they're the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what's it matter what they did to you?”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“It's one thing to develop a nostalgia for home while you're boozing with Yankee writers in Martha's Vineyard or being chased by the bulls in Pamplona. It's something else to go home and visit with the folks in Reed's drugstore on the square and actually listen to them. The reason you can't go home again is not because the down-home folks are mad at you--they're not, don't flatter yourself, they couldn't care less--but because once you're in orbit and you return to Reed's drugstore on the square, you can stand no more than fifteen minutes of the conversation before you head for the woods, head for the liquor store, or head back to Martha's Vineyard, where at least you can put a tolerable and saving distance between you and home. Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.”
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

“Wild Nights—Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile—the winds—
To a heart in port—
Done with the compass—
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden—
Ah, the sea!
Might I but moor— Tonight—
In thee!”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems

“As truth be told, homecoming never gets old.”
― Hlovate

“The footpath curves right, and my home’s roof ridge is visible through the coconut fronds. A streak of happiness lights up in my heart. I know it’s just a building, but I hear its frantic call, reaching out to me like a mother cow that has lost its calf. Is this what differentiates a home from a house—the life in the former, the soul breathed in by my grandparents, my parents, and me?”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?"

"Do I know? [...] The silence, it might be ... or the stillness. To have no more running to do ... to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a beautiful thing to be still.”
― Ellis Peters, A Rare Benedictine

“I'm home and safe and filled with the comfort of being somewhere I've already been. The ruckus of homecoming is brutally enjoyable and everyone makes me feel like a champion. And all I had to do was stay away long enough.”
― Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado

“As her aunt stroked her forehead, she thought that, yes, finally she understood what a homecoming was supposed to be. It was to be comfortable in a way you couldn't be elsewhere. It was to be mothered into an oblivious ooze.”
― Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

“The wind taught me never to forget old friends, by blowing them back to me.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Jess and Polly stood without speaking, letting the sounds of the garden resettle. A flock of tiny fairy wrens darted busily in and around the base of a nearby plum tree, crickets ticked in the long grass, and a sense of timelessness, of nature, older and more pervasive than anything human beings and their histories could generate, grew thick and warm around them.
"Shall we take a walk down together?" said Polly.
Jess noticed a new note of self-possession in her mother's voice. Summery air threaded across the back of her neck, and she felt a pull, suddenly, deep inside her. She didn't know whether it was being here, in this place, or the beautiful weather that evoked long childhood days in which the hours stretched away to be filled only with pleasure, or the fact that it was Christmas Eve, or that her mother was standing here with her, solid and present in a way she hadn't been before, so that Jess was seeing her as if for the first time. But she felt a sensation in her chest that was quite the opposite of loneliness.
"Are you with me?" Polly was searching Jess's face, waiting for an answer.
Jess gave a nod and smiled. "I am.”
― Kate Morton, Homecoming

“I always took the long way home. Wherever I was going, I always took the long way to get there. But I always went my own way, and I always knew I’d get there.”
― Drue Grit

“Our personal mythologies intermingle with the myths of the land. We become part of a place and its history. And even when we do not originate from a place, dwelling with intention helps us be of a place. We become local. In other words, to dwell with intention is an act of homecoming.”
― Solstice, The Earth Spirit Hearth and Home

“And then I did something I hadn’t done in so long: I cried…hard. It was like the damn to my tear ducts had broken and they were just overflowing.” -The Homecoming Queen, S.T. Jones”
― S.T. Jones, The Homecoming Queen

“I'd always thought death would be some sort of peaceful homecoming- a sweet, sad lullaby to usher me into whatever waited afterward.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin

“Hotels are for leaving,
Home is for returning.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“When you retire for the evening, do you try to go to sleep, or do you fall asleep? Huge difference – huge result. Awaken to that and you will rest in peace.”
― Keith Anthony Blanchard, Homecoming: Crossing the Bridge to the Soul

“When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are.”
― Sandra Cisnerossneros

“On that momentous day of my first return to my grandfather’s place in Ojoto after many years of my sojourn in America, I was lost in my thought until a light wind blew across the pedestrian path in a wooded area where I stood, caressing the trees’ leaves and small branches. The stubborn leaves swerved in all directions like untrained dancers learning to strut after consuming palm-wine from large calabash jugs. Looking up, I watched weakened leaves snapped off and gained their freedom from primordial trees. A liberation dance followed in the dense air above me before the leaves set down. Listening to beautiful sounds made by birds converging around me, as if they were singing for the newly liberated leaves, I found myself lost in the wonderment of nature. What I experienced had drawn me back to that exhilarating place for mental respite each time I returned home.”
― Fidelis O. Mkparu, 2021

“Diwali is not just a festival but way of celebrating the true homecoming, welcoming your true-self to your mind, body and soul.”
― Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma, Yog To Yoga

“Vielleicht wäre er einfach wieder abgereist und hätte nochmals wie in jungen Jahren die Wanderschaft gekostet, wovor ihm nicht bange war. Es hielt ihn aber jetzt ein feiner Dorn zurück, sodass er spürte, er werde nicht gehen können, ohne sich zu verletzen und ein Stücklein von sich hängen zu lassen.”
― Hermann Hesse, Die Heimkehr

“Home is a people, not a place.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Her Insan Ailem: Everyone is Family, Everywhere is Home

“We’ve stayed so far away from home for so long.
We’ve forgotten the road that takes us home.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya, Our Nepal, Our Pride

“One day,” he says softly to me, “I hope I can begin to expect your return rather than merely hope for it.”
― Laura Sebastian, Half Sick of Shadows

“Stonebridge Forest by Stewart Stafford

Woke to accusatory dark clouds,
Growling menace of distant storms,
The wrecking ball hung lifeless,
Sun - blinding me with temporal light.

A labyrinthine drive to Stonebridge,
Transporting tunes of my pomp,
Stopped for a tasty king's breakfast,
Simpatico stares from the waitress.

The river's alleviating rush past;
A silver ribbon pulses in my veins,
Positive ions cleanse city toxins,
Welcomed to a placid homecoming.

Fisherman dangling death downriver,
Enthroned on the bank, skimming stones,
I tried to top my record each time,
Teasing out mysteries in a green maze.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Or the guy I went to homecoming with, who vanished halfway through the dance, and I found out later he’d been arrested for covering the principal’s car with chicken nuggets?”
“How did he do that?”
“Apparently barbecue sauce is fairly sticky.”
― Becky Dean, Picture Perfect Boyfriend

“Home is not just where we come from. Home is where we choose to belong.”
― Jeanette LeBlanc