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Quotes About Fragility

He was rarely tender, and seldom reached out to anticipate another's needs, though occasionally he would exhibit a sudden concern for another outlaw, hitchhiker, or bum, and go out of his way to see them looked after. He was touching and infinitely fragile. His indescribably white hands moved constantly: putting a cigarette almost to his mouth, then tugging relentlessly at a tuft of hair at his neck, inadvertently dumping the cigarette ashes in dusty cavalcades down his jacket.
~ Joan Baez
The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.
~ Joan Didion
I feel as though I can only hold it together if I don't worry too much about its falling apart. (288)
~ Joan Frances Casey
Every day is precious. And like is too damned short!" Ren hadn't forgotten the heart attack that had nearly killed Blackjack two years before. "Are you all right?" she asked, laying her hand on his heart. "My heart will be fine. So long as you don't break it.
~ Joan Johnston
Everything if only you could see it clearly enough, is beautiful and complete – the ragged nest, Marion's torn muslin skirts fluted like a nautilus shell, Irma's ringlets framing her face in exquisite wiry spirals – even Edith, flushed and childishly vulnerable in sleep.
~ Joan Lindsay
Osteoporosis isn't a problem that gets a lot of attention, but it is deadly in older women. The weakening of their bones doesn't only result in cosmetic changes. The fragility means that a fall can be life-threatening.
~ Joanna Campbell Slan
It is the delusion that the self is so separate and fragile that we must delineate and defend its boundaries; that it is so small and so needy that we must endlessly acquire and endlessly consume; and that as individuals, corporations, nation-states, or a species, we can be immune to what we do to other beings. The
~ Joanna Macy
And then a strong gust blew against her, and her feet slipped just slightly. She jerked forward against the railing, ever so softly. But, rotten, it crumbled like paper, and May and Kitty went sliding forward, right through it. May scrambled to stop herself, but it was too late. They slid a few more feet, then fell off the edge of the roof. They looked like blackbirds faliing out through the sky.
~ Jodi Lynn Anderson
You make yourself too hard, you make yourself brittle too. Crack once, crack all to pieces.
~ Joe Abercrombie
He touched me as if I were the curved and delicate handle of a china cup, but he held me tightly just as I was, flesh and blood and full of human flaws and fears. In his arms I wasn't a girl dreaming of sailing the high seas, and I wasn't a farm kid jumping the train, either, but a fully grown woman riding the soft side of a crescent moon.
~ Ann Howard Creel
When an old person dies," Kent said, "even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They're like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like your aunt Sylvie dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked over.
~ Ann Napolitano
He wanted to know where the ice was weakest beneath their feet so he could keep them from falling through.
~ Ann Napolitano
It was the summer, and Clare Bryant was happy. In the midst of the world which seemed so vast and dangerous to her, so full of change and precariousness, she had found one enduring rock to which her thin arms could cling.
~ Anna Kavan
You who understand what a human mind can be, how can you bear it? I don't have the hundredth part of your mind and there are days when I think I'll go mad. I can feel it. Or hear it. It's more like hearing something creeping along the walls, just behind my head, getting closer and closer. A big insect, maybe a scorpion. A dry skittering, that's what madness sounds like to me.
~ Annabel Lyon
How can you be sure?" "Human networks are the most vulnerable," Eliasz replied.
~ Annalee Newitz
And time brings down what is both strong and tall.
~ Anne Bradstreet
His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind.
~ Anne Bronte
Humans in love are terrible. You see them come hungering at one another like prehistoric wolves, you see something struggling for life in between them like a root or a soul and it flares for a moment, then they smash it. The difference between them smashes the bones out. So delicate the bones.
~ Anne Carson
And for a moment the frailest leaves of life contained him in a widening happiness.
~ Anne Carson
Why not keep moving it's true every epitaph calls out to the passerby but the marks are a trap the mourning is irrelevant I knew a man who dreamed his backside was made of glass and dared not sit down for 7 months
~ Anne Carson
He's fine. He's fine,' he kept saying as the baby became ever more cranky and bewildered; screaming in terror if she tried to put him down. 'Why should he be unhappy?' she wanted to say. 'He has had so few days in this world. Why should the unhappiness start here?
~ Anne Enright
Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark.
~ Anne Sexton
I fear I will be ripped open and found unsightly.
~ Anne Sexton