Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience — buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello — become new all over again.

It's hard to start over, it's hard to make cuts, it's hard to lose friends and tear the fabric of your life. Emigration makes one feel as if one has been launched into an empty space and is now floating aimlessly on it. And on the other hand, it is, of course, a big, interesting adventure, trying out oneself in another language, in another space, gathering experiences that are not given to others, it is in a way conquering freedom. The freedom we strive for, but which is infinitely difficult and tiring.

Maybe the hardest thing about moving overseas was being in a place where no one but your own family had any memory of you. It was like putting yourself back together with little pieces. (p80)

For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.

Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port.

It’s hard to go. It’s scary and lonely…and half the time you’ll be wondering why the hell you’re in Cincinnati or Austin or North Dakota or Mongolia or wherever your melodious little finger-plucking heinie takes you. There will be boondoggles and discombobulated days, freaked-out nights and metaphorical flat tires.

But it will be soul-smashingly beautiful… It will open up your life.

that is what migrations and relocations do to us: when you leave your home for unknown shores, you don’t simply carry on as before; a part of you dies inside so that another part can start all over again.

I think what’s going on with this country is that Americans are now experiencing what it’s like to be an immigrant because it’s not the easiest decision to move away from your home land. And so when that decision is made it’s definitely because you’re fleeing something and hoping for the better, but still not wanting to cut ties with your country…

I made sacrifices by leaving Argentina, leaving my family to start a new life. I changed my friends, my people."

Your new life is going to cost you your old one.
It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense
of direction.
It’s going to cost you relationships and friends.
It’s going to cost you being liked and understood.
It doesn’t matter.
The people who are meant for you are going to meet you
on the other side. You’re going to build a new comfort
zone around the things that actually move you forward.
Instead of being liked, you’re going to be loved. Instead of
being understood, you’re going to be seen.
All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you
no longer are.

I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before.

If you're going to make your life in a new country you should go before you're twenty-five. After that you start to get associations, little grooves and anchors, that make it difficult to change.

Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself.

I found a new me. When I first came over to America, it was like, 'How can I be rich? How can I build my movie career? How can I become the most muscular man?' It was all about me, and then there was this turn, and I found it was really great to do this.