For, what is home? Surely more than a set of rooms, a roof, an address? Home suggests belonging. Suggests warmth, safety, companionship. Love.

Home is a sustained mood or sense that allows us to experience feelings not necessarily sustained in the mundane world: wonder, vision, peace, freedom from worry, freedom from demands, freedom from constant clacking. All these treasures from home are meant to be cached in the psyche for later use in the topside world.

Home is where the heart is. Home is the quality of presence. It’s the quality of being. Home is always here.

Home is understanding and being understood.

Home is a symbol of the self. Caring for a home is caring for one’s self.

The feeling of home is the feeling of I’m together with myself. This togetherness includes all the elements of your being. In order for you to achieve this togetherness, the foundation of your home is the most important part, because it necessitates your self-acceptance and self-awareness.

Home is a concept. It’s one of a story that we cling to so deeply. When your home has been really, “here is my couch, here is my this, here is my that,” it becomes like mine. For me, home is where people who are loving are. It could be on the street. It could be inside of a tent. It could be in a place where they’re not given a land, then that is a place called a slum. It could be in the high rises of New York or in the middle of chaos in Mexico City. And the physical piece of a home is so important, especially when the weather—sun, cold—is against you…

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.

Usually, home is associated with a physical space, whether that is a building, neighborhood, town, city, or country; sometimes all that comes to mind are the four walls of a room. Home is where, when you walk in the door, you recognize the smell of clean clothes, stir-fry, or the scent of a field of wheat. It's the light that shines through the window each night, casting familiar shadows. It's waking up in the morning and walking around without needing to turn on the light. For me, however, all of these feelings are scattered since my home is a collection of specific spaces that make me feel good when I'm in them. I walk around La Cerdanya and suddenly feel at home, but the illusion disappears in the blink of an eye. I go back to Chamonix and the smell of fall welcomes me — I feel at home, but the spell is soon broken. In Nepal, too, the relaxed feeling of home sometimes takes hold of me for a moment. I can often feel more like I'm in my own place in some unknown country than when I'm in the house I've paid for and made my own, where some days I feel like a total stranger.

The definition of a home: you are happy when you leave and you are also happy when you return.

Home is collecting stories, writing them down, and retelling them. Home is writing, and it grounds, sustains, and nourishes me. Home is the page. The one place I always, always come back to.

Home is the place where loneliness disappears. When we’re home, we feel warm, comfortable, safe, fulfilled.

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.