Emotional Distance Quotes

“her eyes are unfathomable to me, hostile, even, as if she had removed herself to a place where I cannot reach her - somewhere I cannot know.”
― Carol Lee, To Die For

“Part of what made this so hard was that he didn’t have any of the more convenient complaints people cited to end a marriage; adultery, neglect, constant arguing. They just lacked a fundamental intimacy that kept someone from feeling alone in the world.”
― Tracey Lange, We Are the Brennans

“Maybe I was afraid of seeing anything as absolute. I wanted to keep moving, like a stream, and I wanted to go on watching everything from a distance.
That’s how I was. I felt close to people, but I didn’t have any friends I could really share my life with, our hearts melting together. Something always failed to communicate.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake

“We may sleep together,
but my dreams are my own.”
― Alicia Cook, Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back

“We want to be seen and understood as we truly are, but I also long to remain veiled and unknown. Behind every aspect of our being lies the unspoken possibility of being different from how we present ourselves to others. This is true for me. Why does this distance exist between us? It’s a gap that can't be measured in kilometers or years; it is an emotional and spiritual divide that separates our hearts and minds. I have become someone who avoids personal interaction, and this makes me hesitant to see you again. I worry about the harsh things we might say to each other, which is why I am so cautious about contacting you as often as I should.”
― Rolf van der Wind

“She fails to see who I am, even, for her eyes do not, will not, take me in. Instead they transmit a powerful message. She is like a billboard flashing, starkly: 'Keep Out'.”
― Carol Lee, To Die For

“Extortion through trust. "Patients confided the most intimate things to him, and also the most dangerous," said Adriana. "Politically dangerous, I mean. And then they expected him to divulge something too. So they wouldn't have to feel naked. He hated that. He hated it from the bottom of his heart. I don't want anybody to expect anything of me, he said then and stamped his foot. And why the devil is it so hard to keep my distance?”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“The distance between my home and here is a fraction of the emotional distance between here and inside.”
― Valentine Glass, The Temptation of Eden

“For the next two months I kept Action Park at an emotional distance, the way a kid thinks about Christmas in September or an adult thinks about that STD test they should probably get after a long weekend in Miami.”
― Clinton Kelly, I Hate Everyone, Except You

“His love had this pull like a quicksand and she was soon all buried deep in it except for her eyes. She could no longer move, breath or make a sound of a cry or laughter. But she could still see. From a distance she could still see her love for him. It looked like a shore with mountains on one side, infinity blue above and waves of all sizes broke onto that shore. Waves he could ride his whole life.”
― Nahiar Ozar

“It is a quirk of the age that the easiest way to start a friendship with someone is generally by asking them to get undressed.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“I don’t want to have this conversation with him. It really isn’t my place.
This is his life. His wife. His house. And I’m only going to be here for
another two days at the most. I dry my hands on a towel just as the
microwave beeps. He doesn’t move to open it because he’s too busy staring
at me, attempting to coax more out of me with that look.”
― Colleen Hoover, Verity

“I don’t want to have this conversation with him. It really isn’t my place.
This is his life. His wife. His house. And I’m only going to be here for another two days at the most. I dry my hands on a towel just as the microwave beeps. He doesn’t move to open it because he’s too busy staring at me, attempting to coax more out of me with that look.”
― Colleen Hoover, Verity

“Sometimes I feel like I miss you when you're right in front of me.”
― Yulin Kuang, How to End a Love Story

“(...) les tenía mucho cariño, y a sus padres les daba absolutamente igualm y fue de esta manera como descubrió que los separaba un terrible abismo inabarcable.”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

“Semaphore was just right for us, I thought, the perfect metaphor for how we'd managed to coexist all these years. Histrionic but mute, we had signalled our deepest feelings through broad strokes of pantomime, and always at a distance.”
― Armistead Maupin, The Night Listener