Amy Tan Quotes

I know that when people pull apart, they usually employ misunderstanding as a weapon, deliberately getting hold of the stick's wrong end, impaling themselves on its point in order to prove the perfidy of the other.

Father knew me not. All my aspirations in life were a sealed book to him, as much as his peculiar religious experiences were to me.

It's amazing how much distance one truth can create between two people.

Now we're like planets, holding to each other from a great distance. [...] Now we're hundreds of miles apart, our short arms keep us lonely, no one hears what's in my head. [...] It's March, even the birds don't know what to do with themselves.

One night I came home. I figured, let my wife come on. I'll play it cool. Let her make the first move. She went to Florida.

The most difficult part for me is feeling connected to the people that I love but always being on the go to different places.

They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong; they pass each other and keep running.

And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.

All the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy ... could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed.

You know people. Most of them don’t hear anything. Those who hear - don’t listen. A few who listen - don’t understand. And those who could understand… they don’t care.

The Germans and I no longer speak the same language.

Whenever you're out of town, no matter modern communications, you feel a little bit out of touch.

Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.

Everything else outside me seems far, far away.

Leaders glare at each other across the chasm of misunderstanding.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

Pride definitely causes a lack of communication.

You could say I try to eliminate people.

I hate the feeling when I'm overseas, away from Australia, that I'm trapped, blocked by an ocean from getting to the people I love. That gives me anxiety.

Walls are built up between people a hell of a damn sight faster than--broken down.

Now, as we stand three feet apart and stare at each other, I feel the full distance that comes with spending so much time apart, a moment filled with the electricity of a first meeting and the uncertainty of strangers.

We were like deaf people trying to dance to a beat we couldn't hear, long after the music actually stopped.

All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.

It is sad that the air is the only thing we share. No matter how close we get to each other, there is always air between us.

We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.