Quotes About Distance

Le auto sono come le persone. Ogni giorno andiamo in giro in mezzo alla ressa, corriamo di qua e di là, arrivando quasi a toccarci ma in realtà c'è pochissimo contatto. Tutti quegli scontri mancati. Tutte quelle opportunità perse. E' inquietante, a pensarci bene. Forse è meglio non pensarci affatto

Os carros são como as pessoas. Movemo-nos em círculos todos os dias, corremos daqui para ali, passamos a centímetros uns dos outros, mas há muito pouco contacto real. Tantos desencontros. Tantos «podia ter sido». É assustador, quando pensamos nisso. Provavelmente, o melhor é não pensar.

The odd truth about Alfred was that love, for him, was a matter not of approaching but of keeping away.

I guess I was just trying to say that the Internet is good at satisfying needs from a distance. Male or female.

But like so many phenomena that were beautiful at a distance—thunderheads, volcanic eruptions, the stars and planets—this alluring pain proved, at closer range, to be inhuman in its scale.

Il grimpa l'escalier menant à son appartement dont il avait été si éloigné durant les deux ans et demi passés que le lieu semblait s'être retourné contre lui, ne plus vouloir être son chez-lui.

Above all, we cannot and should not try to distance ourselves from any of these inquisitions by reassuring ourselves that no abuse of "moral justice" could occur in the American democracy.

How strange it began to seem that cars have bodies that never are supposed to touch, a disaster if they do.

I was famously in love with a woman who had no time to spare, not even a breath, for she dwelled in a place beyond time or the reach of anyone's Rolodex, her every breath measured out of pressurized tanks.

I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.

Why I'm Not Where You Are

Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn't see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.

I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side.

And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table?

Oskar Schell: If the sun were to explode, you wouldn't even know about it for 8 minutes because thats how long it takes for light to travel to us. For eight minutes the world would still be bright and it would still feel warm. It was a year since my dad died and I could feel my eight minutes with him... were running out.

Things were happening around us, but nothing was happening between us.

Between any two beings there is a unique, uncrossable distance, an unenterable sanctuary. Sometimes it takes the shape of aloneness. Sometimes it takes the shape of love.

We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.

Someone needed to invent a way to be close to people without having to see them, or talk to them on the phone, or write (or read) letters, or e-mails, or texts.

We just stood there, facing each other, but nine floors apart.

An ocean could not explain the distance we have traveled.

I walked into a bakery seven years later and there he was. He had dogs at his feet and a bird in a cage beside him. The seven years were not seven years. They were not seven hundred years. Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we had traveled, just as the dead can never be counted. I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go right up to him.

Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we have traveled, just as the dead can never be counted.

I walked seven circles around you when we got married. I can't even find you now.