Quotes About Vulnerability

man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind

We are all specialised forms of survivor. We lack what we fundamentally need and forge ahead regardless, hurriedly hiding our wounds, disguising our ineptitude, bluffing our way through our weaknesses.

This is a street where the weaker souls crawl into bed as soon as the sun sets and lie awake listening to the rats.

Sugar understood the permanence of being Sugar or Lotty or Lucy or whoever you might be, trapped on a square of card to be shown at will to strangers. Whatever violations she routinely submits to in the privacy of bedroom, they vanish the moment they're over, half-forgotten with the drying of sweat. But to be chemically fixed in time and passed hand to hand forever: that is a nakedness which can never be clothed again

All along the street, keys rattle in key-holes as each shop's ornate metal clothing is stripped away...It's as if, having unlocked the chastity of shutters and doors, they can't see the point in maintaining any shred of modesty.

He cupped his testicles in his hands, and, with his wrists, pressed his penis hard against his belly until the semen came.

but the world remains a dangerous place and we remain—merely by being human—vulnerable to the horrors that humans can cause.

His greatest fear, as he dissolved into the dark, was that he would never see other humans the same way again.

Matthey, a Geneva physician very close to Rousseau's influence, formulates the prospect for all men of reason: 'Do not glory in your state, if you are wise and civilized men; an instant suffices to disturb and annihilate that supposed wisdom of which you are so proud; an unexpected event, a sharp and sudden emotion of the soul will abruptly change the most reasonable and intelligent man into a raving idiot.

My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous.

I'm well aware that I shouldn't be telling you these things; rather, I want to tell you these things, but I'm not certain they're worth publishing. I'm a bit terrified at the idea that one day they'll be discovered.

Ya smell like honey, he said. I'm allergic to bees, she whispered. I'll do my best not to sting ya, love.

Soft flesh mingled with defiant will to create one frustratingly perfect woman.

It occurred to him that strength was quite different from toughness and that being vulnerable wasn't quite the same as being weak.

Miss Thorne said no more. Poor boy, she thought, away from his loving home and now dumped with an irritable old man. Tom

I guess I'm just stuck on the idea that there's this monumental machine, and we're all part of it. Most of the time, we don't even stop to think about how it works. We just go about our business, doing our part, trusting that everyone else will do their part, and the machine will keep functioning. But all it takes is for someone to come along who isn't thinking straight, some who's not paying attention, or worse, hell-bent on self-destruction and everything turns to shit.

To have someone know you so thoroughly and not want you. Is there anything more painful?

Oh my God, Michelle thought, I think we're making love. It was a term everyone barfed at. No one wanted to make love, people wanted to fuck, to take each other's skin apart with knives and pin it back together with needles.

I had played all my angles, tossed my heart with a wet rattling thump onto her snare drum, I Love You I Love You I Love You.

Weakness is emanating from the crowd

had the social instinct of a woman—that of being dependent upon a man. You were afraid

You are no longer responsible for anyone's opinion. You have no need to control anyone, and no one controls you either... You don't need to be right and you don't need to make anyone else wrong...you are no longer afraid of being rejected, and you don't have the need to be accepted...you can walk into the world with your heart completely open, and not be afraid to be hurt.

Humans cover themselves, and protect themselves, and when someone says, "You are pushing my buttons," it is not exactly true. What is true is that you are touching a wound in his mind, and he reacts because it hurts.

Making assumptions in our relationships is really asking for problems. Often we make the assumption that our partners know what we think and that we don't have to say what we want. We assume they are going to do what we want, because they know us so well. If they don't do what we assume they should do, we feel so hurt and say, "You should have known.