Quotes About Fragility

At first the lives of women frightened me. They seemed so fragile, so dependent on fathers and husbands and brothers and lovers. Gradually, though, I noticed how supple their lives were beneath the surface. I saw, too, that sooner or later, by choice or by chance most women faced the task of adapting to a future on their own. When at my most optimistic, I thought of it as independence, in darker moods, as survival. Either way, women had to do it.

She look like she ain't long for this world but dressed well for the next.

You know, he say, you use to remind me of a bird. Way back when you first come to live with me. You was so skinny, Lord, he say. And the least little thing happen, you looked about to fly away.

Skin like ivory, perfect; A goddess, she must be. Slender fingers, unadorned; beautiful simplicity. A single teardrop; when did it fall? Could this goddess be mortal, after all?

You have to be grateful for the small things, when any minute might be your last.

It's an easy thing to make a man a carcass. He knew a thousand ways to do it. But once you've done it, there's no going back. One minute he's a man, all full up with hopes, and thoughts, and dreams. A man with friends, and family, and a place where he's from. Next minute he's mud.

Now he'd started crying he couldn't seem to stop. No more than you can rebuild a burst dam when the flood's still surging through. That's the problem with making yourself hard. Once you crack, there's no putting yourself back together.

The boundaries of civilisation are not the impregnable walls civilised men take them for. As easily as smoke on the wind they can dissolve.

If men can change like that.' And Monza snapped her fingers in his face. 'That's the only way they do change, ain't it?' His one eye stayed on her. 'If things change enough around 'em? Men are brittle, I reckon. They don't bend into new shapes. They get broken into them. Crushed into them.

Trust is like glass... Lovely, but only a fool rests lots of weight on it.

I wouldn't trust his corpse to stop an arrow.

One minute you think you're the most powerful man in the world. The next you can't even breathe by yourself. Some kinds of power are nothing but tricks of the mind.

The fabric of our complex society is woven too tightly to permit any part of it to be damaged without damaging the whole.

Her sanity was a fragile thing, a butterfly cupped in her hands, that she carried with her everywhere, afraid of what would happen if she let it go - or got careless and crushed it.

Humanity is worse than flies. If even one dried nugget of offal survives the flames, we'll be swarming all over it. Fighting about who owns it and selling the most fragrant chunks to the wealthy and the gullible.

Death and ruin is man's preferred ecosystem. Did you ever read about the bacterium that thrives in volcanoes, right on the edge of boiling rock? That's us. Humanity is a germ that thrives on the very edge of catastrophe.

It was ludicrous to cry because there was no more Google, but for a moment Harper felt very close to weeping. The idea that Google could collapse and be gone was as hard to imagine as the fall of the Twin Towers. It had seemed at least as permanent a part of the cultural landscape.

After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night.

Human beings are like the screwed-up children of alcoholic parents in that way, picking up the pieces afterward and trying to make up reasons why. You could argue that's what makes us interesting, and maybe it is to some alien race studying us from a million miles away. From where I sit it just seems pathetic and sad.

Our love is a forest fire and we are the little things that live in the trees.

I love my puppy. I love that he is so young and full of life, and that he will still die first.

God, he was going to destroy her. But maybe for the first time in her life, she'd found a man worth shattering for.

there is strong scientific evidence that persistent cannabis use affects how adolescent and teenage brains develop, and can permanently lower their IQ. One of my best friends when I was a kid smoked a lot of weed, and he feels it harmed him for life. He may be right. Developing brains are more fragile than adult brains: they need to be protected.

if only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.