Passport Quotes

“Each guy stamped the passport of my heart. “You’re worthy.” Stamp. “You’re enough.” “You have not failed completely.” Stamp, stamp.”
― Kimberly Novosel, Loved

“If life gives you a passport size dream, don't frame it... Order for a reprint... Go for the bigger picture of you! You deserve a bigger and bright image of you... Go and soar like an eagle!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365

“It makes me wonder what belonging to a place means. Charles died a Russian in Paris. Viktor called it wrong and was a Russian in Vienna for fifty years, then Austrian, then a citizen of the Reich, and then stateless. Elisabeth kept Dutch citizenship in England for fifty years. And Iggie was Austrian, then American, then an Austrian living in Japan.

You assimilate, but you need somewhere else to go. You keep your passport to hand. You keep something private.”
― Edmund de Waal, The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss

“Mother Nature made continents. Human beings made countries.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Your dominion has nothing to do with a negative person's opinion. Flee from people who only hung on passport-size dreams and you'll see your bigger picture! Go for the big one!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365

“God gave us imaginations because he wants us to see the photos of our destinies respectively and make proper graphical designs of them. You owe it to yourself to enlarge that image you carry into bigger sizes.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Dream big!: See your bigger picture!

“Learn to choose and how it’s done… Learning what to choose and how to choose it is the best way of getting your bigger picture out of your passport size potentials!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Dream big!: See your bigger picture!

“When the lenses in the eyes of a leader captures tomorrow, they don't print the passport size of it. They make enlargements.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Ladder

“When life gives you a passport dream, order for a reprint. Try again till you have the bigger image. Be passionate you become the real you!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Dream big!: See your bigger picture!

“أرى الأمل في عيونهم الهاربة متشبثاً بحبل ليتسلق خارجاً من بئر همومهم المختنقة بين جدران صدورهم المعبّقة بدخان النيران والطلقات الرصاصية، ليصطدم بالأمواج المنكسرة ما بين عيونهم والحياة...
يبحثون عن جواز سفر...
اسمه جواز سفر... ولسخرية القدر وتناقض المسميّات فهو وثيقة "قد" تسمح بكل شيء إلا السفر، ربّما أخطأوا في هذه التسمية، كان من الأجدر تسميته "جواز حياة"، لأن من قرر تقسيم هذه الأرض إلى حدود ... قرر معها تقسيم حق الإنسان في الحياة.
أيُعقل أن يهرب الأطفال والرجال والنساء من موطنهم إلى بلاد أخرى تفصلها حدود يحرسها من حالفهم الحظ وحصلوا على "جواز سفر" ذات "قيمة حياتية" أعلى؟
أيُعقل أن يحاول اجتياز البحار مئات الأبرياء... ويدفعوا آلاف الدولارات ليصادقوا المهرّبين آملين بأن تُفتح نافذة جديدة لهم على الحياة... ومع هذا ورغم القوارب الخائبة... يصل منهم حيّا بضعة عشرات والباقي أضحى مفقوداً أو جثثاً لا قيمة لها في الحياة... وكأنهم أرواحاً غلفتها أجسادٌ مكروهة ومنبوذة في كل بقاع الأرض الموحشة.
أحياتهم ليست جديرة وذات أهمية كبيرة بما يكفي بأن نشاركهم الحياة؟
بأصواتهم المبحوحة... غنّوا للحياة والحرية وبقلوبهم الموجوعة أحبّوا الحياة ولسوء حظهم جواز سفرهم قتلهم...”
― Abeer Allan

“That evening, after Romer had left so peremptorily, she had gone through to the salon to talk to her father. A job for the British government, she told him. £500 a year, a British passport. He feigned surprise but it was obvious that Romer had briefed him to a certain extent.
'You'd be a British citizen, with a passport,' her father said, his features incredulous, almost abjectly so - as if it were unthinkable that a nonentity such as he should have a daughter who was a British citizen. 'Do you know what I would give to be a British citizen?' he said, all the while with his left hand miming a sawing motion at his right elbow.”
― William Boyd

“Twenty-three D," he said, as a boarding-pass spooled from a different slot. He pulled her passport out and handed it to her, along with her ticket and the boarding pass. "Gate fifty-two, blue concourse. Checking anything?"
"No."
"Passengers who've cleared security may be subject to noninvasive DNA sampling," he said, the words all run together because he was only saying it because it was the law that he had to.
She put her passport and ticket away in the special pocket inside her parka. She kept the boarding pass in her hand. She went looking for the blue concourse. She had to go downstairs to find it, and take one of those trains that was like an elevator that ran sideways. Half an hour later she was through security, looking at the seals they'd put on the zippers of her carry-on. They looked like rings of rubbery red candy. She hadn't expected them to do that; she'd thought she could find a pay-station in the departure lounge, link up, and give the club an update. They never sealed her carry-on when she went to Vancouver to stay with her uncle, but that wasn't really international, not since the Agreement.
She was riding a rubber sidewalk toward Gate 52 when she saw the blue light flashing, up ahead. Soldiers there, and a little barricade. The soldiers were lining people up as they came off the sidewalk. They wore fatigues and didn't seem much older than the guys at her last school.
"Shit," she heard the woman in front of her say, a big-haired blond with obvious extensions woven in.”
― William Gibson, Idoru

“There is a girl behind the desk in blue uniform, with dark red hair, spread fanlike from her head in lacquered splendour; she looks at them without interest. 'Hallo, dolling,' says Lubijova, 'Here is Professor Petwurt, reservation of the Min'stratii Kulturi, confirmation here.' 'So, Petvurt?' the girl says, taking a pen from her hair and running it languidly down the columns of a large book. 'Da, Pervert, so, here is. Passipotti. ' 'She likes your passport, don't give it to her, says Lubijova, 'Give it to me. I know these people well, they are such bureaucrats. Now, dolling, tell me, how long do you keep?' 'Tomorrow,' says the girl, 'It registers with the police.”
― Malcolm Bradbury , Rates of Exchange

“If Gandhi were here, and he’d even bother to talk to me, he’d probably shake his head and ask me what I thought I was doing. He’d probably gently scold me and tell me that one does not become spiritually evolved simply by filling a Spiritual Places Passport with stamps.”
― Thomas Lloyd Qualls, Painted Oxen

“I came to America with a passport and a valise full of dreams”
― Charmaine J Forde

“One country’s emigrant is another country’s immigrant.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I am a British guy with a USA passport.”
― Steven Magee

“Who are you?” they asked.
“I’m not the one who chose my country, my parents, and my name! But I’m the one who decides how to think.” I replied.
Wistfully, they didn’t accept my thoughts as an ID!”
― Jim Borna

“Because of the wars and devastation of the last few decades, the only way an Iraqi could be treated with dignity, whether in Iraq or elsewhere, was to hold a foreign—meaning Western—passport. A 'good' or a 'fortunate' Iraqi is almost by definition one who holds a Western passport. An Iraqi passport is paralyzing. It’s ‘suspect’ at every airport, checkpoint, or point of entry. As an Iraqi, one is unwelcome almost everywhere. One is questioned almost to death before being allowed entry to any country, and one is always welcome to exit with no questions asked. Every authority and official think they have the right to interrogate an Iraqi without a second thought. Iraqis know well that holding that useless document called an ‘Iraqi passport’ is a curse at this point in history…Most passport holders who come from nations whose people count as, using Frantz Fanon’s words, ‘the wretched of the earth’, experience different forms of discrimination and exclusion. Some experiences are harsher than others. It is all about power, or lack thereof. Your passport has power. It is not just a document that helps you pass; it can become a symbol of humiliation that prevents you from passing.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“You are not forced to turn this world into a hell, thinking that you will receive, or gain the passport of entering heaven.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo, Resistance To Intolerance

“Language was a kind of passport. You could go where you like if you had a clean record. p.155”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

“I use shampoo for haircare, but the shampoo is not my identity, likewise I use a passport for travel, but the passport is not my identity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Gente Mente Adelante: Prejudice Conquered is World Conquered

“Tarkime, yra daugybė žmonių, kurie dėl pačių objektyviausių priežasčių neturi paso. Jie dėl to nekalti, bet mes vis tiek neleidžiame jiems keliauti, laisvai kirsti valstybių sienų - tokia sienų politika, ir tiek.”
― Dainius Vanagas, Oderis

“Technology and global trade have diluted the ties between nationals and strengthened the bonds between geographical strangers. To be from and connected to just one place is becoming rarer, and people feel increasingly disconnected from the nation-states issuing their birth certificates and passports.”
― Lauren Razavi, Global Natives: The New Frontiers of Work, Travel, and Innovation

“I bear the signature of my homeland, and I feel surrounded by it everywhere I go.”
― Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary

“And so we entered the country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines on the tiny island of Bequia with entry stamps given as if twisting through a turnstile to enter an amusement park.”
― Laurie Perez, The Power of Amie Martine

“Passport is just a glorified bus pass.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“The lieutenant's impression that here was a young man unhealthily preoccupied with himself was confirmed by Port's next words. "It's strange," he said with a deprecatory smile, "how, ever since I discovered that my passport was gone, I've felt only half alive. But it's a very depressing thing in a place like this to have no proof of who you are, you know.”
― Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

“Right time waits for the right human,
Civilized world awaits a civilized human.
When the last barbwire is banned from life,
Passports become buspass and apes become human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Little Planet on The Prairie: Dunya Benim, Sorumluluk Benim

“When the last barbwire is banned from life, passports become buspass and apes become human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Little Planet on The Prairie: Dunya Benim, Sorumluluk Benim