One of the big themes running through my novel What’s Left was that “family” can mean so many different things to so many different people.

Maybe it’s all the renovations going on in our old house, but recently I’ve been pondering many varied understandings of the word “home,” too.

For starters, sampling of what others have said, a home is:

1. “Where one starts from.” (T.S. Eliot)
2. “Where we should feel secure and comfortable.” (Catherine Pulsifer)
3. “A shelter from storms – all sorts of storms.” (William J. Bennett)
4. “Where there’s one to love us.” (Charles Swain)
5. “Any four walls that enclose the right person.” (Helen Rowland)
6. “Where my habits have a habitat.” (Fiona Apple)
7. “Not where you live but where they understand you.” (Christian Morgenstern)
8. “A place that gives you unconditional love, happiness, and comfort. It may be a place where you can bury your sorrows, store your belongings, or welcome your friends. A happy home doesn’t require the trappings of opulence.” (Simran Kuhrana)
9. “A machine for living in.” (Le Corbusier)
10. “The place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” (Robert Frost)

Is it even a place at all?

Cecilia Ahern insists it’s a feeling. Lemony Snicket pegs that as homesick, “even if you have a new home that has nicer wallpaper and a more efficient dishwasher than the home in which you grew up.” Maya Angelou relates it to an ache “in all of us, the safe place we can go as we are and not be questioned.” For John Ed Pearce, it’s a state of  mind, somewhere “you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.” Edward Sharpe senses home as his beloved’s presence, “Wherever I’m with you.” Edie Falco connects it family when he returns to them from his paying job and realizes they make his labors “richer, easier and more fun.” For May Sarton, it must have “one warm, comfy chair” as the line between being “soulless.”