Quotes About Vulnerability

The fear of an unknown never resolves, because the unknown expands infinitely outward, leaving you to cling pitifully to any small shelter of the known: a cracker has twelve calories; the skin, when cut, bleeds.

For some reason, I believed that I had above all else an obligation to protect everyone-- my teachers, my family-- from the knowledge of my cutting. What they did not know would not cause them pain.

Meg often slept with men she didn't want to sleep with: she didn't know how to say no. More precisely, she didn't know she was allowed to say no.

Recovering alcoholics often talk about drinking "the way they wanted to" when they were alone, drinking without the feeling of social restraint they might have had at a party or in a restaurant. There's something almost childlike about the need, and about the language we use to describe it: wanting our bottles, wanting to crawl into that dark room in our minds and curl up and be alone with our object of security.

I felt small and exposed in his presence, as though my body was transparent and fragile as air, as though I might evaporate at any moment, or blow away.

With a cry of horror, Nubia turned to hide her face in Aristo's tunic, and she felt his strong arms encircle her protectively. The giant was Mindius's evil bodyguard, Ursus.

Gary'nin hat?rlayabildi?i kadar?yla Gerta,ilk defa bu kadar hassas görünüyordu.Kirpikleri titriyor,a?z? bir kö?eye do?ru seyiriyordu.'Mükemmel bir i? ç?kar?yorsun.Otis seni çok seviyor.

What I'm suggesting is: Just let failure and humiliation (and all the "bad stuff"—anxiety and scarcity and fat and wrinkles and pain and ultimately death itself) be the cherished beloveds that they already are to you.

The heart is the toughest part of the body. Tenderness is in the hands.

Everyone who loves risks losing their heart every minute of every day.

a new baby is not uninterrupted bliss. It's joy mixed with terror, fatigue, depression, intense feelings of helplessness, loneliness and inadequacy. And poop.

The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.

She laughed, and the sound pierced his heart.

Before she turned around to face him, she wiped away the tears that had started down her cheeks. Nancy didn't cry much, but when she did, she cried in private.

tissues, crumpled baby

I've always protected myself when it comes to love. And maybe that's the problem. By not letting myself get hurt now, it ripples into much bigger pain later.

I like the flaws best," Sam said. "They make her real.

She couldn't let him get close. He would let her down. She knew it. And when that happened, she would be worse off than before. Better to keep her heart closed, safe. Guarded.

I rarely cry. I save my feelings up inside me like I have something more specific in mind for them. I am waiting for the exact perfect situation and then BOOM! I'll explode in a light show of feeling and emotion - a pinata stuffed with tender nuances and pent-up passions

The only thing worse than being hurt is everyone knowing that you're hurt.

I suspect that no matter what happens I will allow it to hurt me. Eat away at my insides, as it were—as it will be. As it always has been. Why am I so accessible? Why do I give myself to people who will always and should always remain strangers? I have always relied on the cruelty of strangers and I must stop it now.

I'm frightened of the power I have given him over me and of how he will almost certainly abuse it, merely by not being fully aware he has it.

Because what can you do with people that like you, except, of course, inevitably disappoint them?

I should let people I meet do the work of piecing me together until they can complete, or mostly complete, the puzzle. And when they're finished they can look at the picture that they've managed to piece together and decide whether they like it or not. On their own time. Let them discover you.