Not to put too fine a point on it, since the first part of this article was published last month, your house has moved about 2mm further away from the Statue of Liberty. If we produce a map of all the major earthquakes in the world over a period of time, such as is shown in fig 2, we find that they are not at all randomly distributed but follow very clear zones and bands. For a start, they follow all of the mid oceanic ridges and they also follow the edges of some continents. These plates, tectonic plates as they are known, are able to move independently of one another, being pushed up by the sea floor spreading. At the edges of the plates, where they rub against each other, earthquakes occur due to the friction.
T here are logically three ways that plate margins can move relative to one another.
Moving away from one another. This results in new oceanic crust being formed as lava fills the gap between the plates. This is known as a constructive margin and is what occurs at a mid oceanic ridge. Moving towards each other. Alternatively if an oceanic plate collides with a continental plate then the continental crust, being more buoyant, rides over the top of the oceanic plate.