Quotes About Vulnerability

There's something pitiable and terrifying about the unconscious bully. His crumpled nose and hat. ... This is the first true thing that Brauser and I have ever shared, this fear, besides dog-eared songbooks and cafeteria noodles. I wonder, briefly, if I could eat Brauser if it came to that. At this point, we have been alone on the glacier for fourteen minutes.

On her last visit, the girl stole one of his family photographs right out of the frame. He thinks this means she is starting to care about him, too. Now whenever he looks at the empty frame, Sawtooth is moved to tears. He has to stare straight up at the ceiling, a loophole that prevents fluid from falling out of the eyes, thus saving a man the embarrassment of crying like a damn fool infant.

Promises are fragile things. You blink, and they turn into lies.

She came for him like an astronaut, bouncing on the gray carpet. The only English word she knew was his name. Almost weightlessly, she reached for him. For wasn't she equally terrified? There was no buoy other than this boy, who had gripped her with his thin, freckled arms, bellying her out of the peat bog and into time.

I wish I could say I gulp pure courage as I run, like those brave little girls you read about in stories, ... But this burst of speed comes from an older adrenaline, some limbic other. Not courage, but a deeper terror. I don't want to be left alone. And I am ready to defend Ossie against whatever monster I encounter, ... and save her for myself.

Far away, I can hear Mouflon, our last sheep, bleating in the dark. I wonder if Annie is still out to protect her, still scouring the woods in barefoot pursuit of those dogs. I feel sorry for Annie, alone with a rabid pack of her own delusions. I feel sorrier for Mouflon. She's alone with Annie.

I blinked down at a little blond child and then saw that my two hands were shaking violently, soundlessly, like old friends wishing not to burden me with their troubles.

My oldest daughter was four pounds at birth, and her appearance flooded the earth with an infinite number of horrors and perils, a demonic surge of catastrophic possibilities out of all proportion to the tiny mass in my arms. Love unlids Pandora's box.

When you are a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

with a little penguin huddle of moles just above her hip, looking lost on that Arctic shelf.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

She doesn't know how to answer the man's question about why she snuck into the conch. She just feels like there's something she needs to protect. Some larval understanding, something cocooned inside her, that seems to get unspun and exploded with each passing year... That's the way to do it , the grown up voices whisper. Wear your skeleton on the inside out, and keep your insect heart secret.

Being unconscious with somebody, that's a big deal.

Please do not become so hurt by life that when someone loving comes along, or something good happens, you resist allowing the love and joy in.

Man and woman are two locked caskets, of which each contains the key to the other.

She thought of the horse with his scars and wondered if having them so visible wasn't preferable to the hidden kind where nobody knew how to avoid the parts that still hurt.

You're strong at the broken places.

If it got out that I didn't have to rush back, I'd be forced to stay longer. The thought of remaining scared me. Like I'd start shedding my new, shiny skin I'd worked so hard to achieve, revealing the scarred and ugly person beneath.

Throughout our lives we are all falling. Falling down, falling out, falling away. Falling in love. The trick is finding someone to catch us. And sometimes we surprise ourselves by finding out that person is us.

I wanted to cry for the little girls we'd been before the world's glaring spotlight eradicated our childish imaginations.

A strong breeze pushed at the martin houses strung from the old oak tree below. Watching them, Ceecee remembered the story Margaret had told her long ago, about how the small birds relied on others to make their homes for them. It made sense to her now, knowing that so much of life was reliant on things outside of oneself, how the whims of others dictated people's hearts and lives. How dreams and wishes were just so much dust when held against the will of another human being.

asking for help doesn't mean you're weak. It means you're strong enough to know you can't handle it all on your own.

The paradox of being a "strong" woman is that you are both perfectly capable of taking care of yourself and desperately hopeful that you don't always have to.