emotional distance Quotes

“When the queen at last set down the parchment and met her daughter’s eyes, Ani was expecting an accusing stare and was surprised by the sorrow that weighed down her features. She could not tell if the sorrow was for her father or for her. A thought buzzed in Ani’s head: I do not know this woman at all. Her stomach turned uneasily.”

But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.

“I would love you all the day, every night we would kiss and play, if with me you’d fondly stray, over the hills and far away.”

“To be a successful business owner and investor, you have to be emotionally neutral to winning and losing. Winning and losing are just part of the game.”

“’I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.’”

“’I’m a businessman,’ he’d told her. ‘No more, no less.’”

“Avoidance occurs on two levels. On the first level, there is an emotional avoidance of all distressing memories, thoughts, and feelings about the trauma. On the second, there is a behavioral avoidance of the people, places, conversations, activities, objects, and situations that cause those distressing trauma-related memories, thoughts, or feelings.”

“Amaranta could not reconcile her image of the brother who had spent his adolescence making little gold fishes with that of the mythical warrior who had placed a distance of ten feet between himself and the rest of humanity. But when the approach of the armistice became known and they thought that he would return changed back into a human being, delivered at last for the hearts of his own people, the family feelings, dormant for such a long time, were reborn stronger than ever.”

“In trying to become ‘objective,’ Western culture made ‘objects’ of things and people when it distanced itself from them, thereby losing ‘touch’ with them.”

“My hope is that in these last moments he’ll show me the vulnerable and tender underbelly of his self, but this isn’t happening, yet, and I’m a fool to think that it will. This is the way it has gone from the beginning: every time we get close to something meaningful, serious, or delicate, he tells a joke. There is a never a yes or no, what do you think, here, according to me, is the meaning of life.”

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. He’s lived his whole life like a turtle, within an emotional carapace that makes for the perfect defense: there’s absolutely no way in.”

″ ‘My daughter, Sophie,’ Chacko said, and laughed a small, nervous laugh that was worried, in case Margaret Kochamma said ‘ex-daughter.’ But she didn’t.”

″[Ammu] was surprised at the extent of her daughter’s physical ease with him. Surprised that her child seemed to have a sub-world that excluded her entirely.”

“Parents who are less available and responsive - perhaps they are overwhelmed themselves, or not comfortable with intense emotions - may cause a highly sensitive child to hide her feelings in order to be accepted and not cause any trouble.”

“As he handed it to me, I saw he’d gripped it so tightly his knuckles had turned white. We were not the kissing kind, me and Pa, but I wished that maybe he would at least hug me good-bye.”

“Too much time has passed for the father to ask his son how he’s doing, too much time for the son to be able to explain. The distance between them is too great now.”

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.