Quotes About Vulnerability

Now it seems obvious, of course, that even a strong person has weak spots and that I had hit Cassie's full force, with all the precision of a jeweler fragmenting a stone along a flaw. She must have thought, sometimes, of her namesake, the votary branded with her god's most inventive and sadistic curse: to tell the truth, and never to be believed.

someone else, bore its way in and feed off that mind too. Even the cute little student mincing along in her flowery dress, the shuffling old fella with his shuffling spaniel, they look Ebola-lethal. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me. Maybe I'm getting the flu.

Every detective has a certain kind of case that he or she finds almost unbearable, against which the usual shield of practiced professional detachment turns brittle and untrustworthy. Cassie, though nobody else knows this, has nightmares when she works rape-murders; I, displaying a singular lack of originality, have serious trouble with murdered children; and, apparently, family killings gave Sam the heebie-jeebies. This case could turn out to be perfect for all three of us.

I needed to go into that bare, with nothing from my own life on my body, the way woodcutters' children in fairy tales have to leave their protections behind to enter the enchanted castle; the way votaries in old religions used to go naked to their initiation rites.

And then, too, I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn't find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.

The lines of her face, turned up to the sky, would have broken your heart.

We lay very still. I could feel the air around us changing, blooming and shimmering like the air over a scorching road. My heart was speeding, or hers was banging against my chest, I'm not sure. I turned Cassie in my arms and kissed her, and after a moment she kissed me back. I know I said that I always choose the anticlimactic over the irrevocable, and yes of course what I meant was that I have always been a coward, but I lied: not always, there was that night, there was that one time.

My ribs opened up like windows, I'd forgotten you could breathe that deeply.

Life feels like a big thing when it takes four days for all of it to leave a man. When it's gone in a few seconds, it looks awful small all of a sudden. We don't like to face up to that, but the animals know it. They've no notions about their dying. It's a little thing, only; you'd get it done in no time. All it takes is one nip from a fox. Or a hay baler, or a propane tank.

I was doing exactly the same thing as Aislinn: getting lost so deep inside the story in my head, I couldn't see past its walls to the outside world. I feel those walls shift and start to waver, with a rumble that shakes my bones from the inside out. I feel my face naked to the ice-flavored air that pours through the cracks and keeps coming. A great shiver is building in my back.

If you don't have your code, you got nothing to hold you down. You just drift, any way things blow you.

The moment I said Broken Harbor to O'Kelly, every faded scar in my mind had lit up like a beacon. I had walked the glittering lines of those scars, obedient as a farm animal, from that moment straight to this one. I had moved through this case shining like Conor Brennan had shone on that dark road, a blazing signal for predators and scavengers far and wide.

We had been so small, so recklessly sure that together we could defy all the dark uncomplicated threats of the adult world, rust straight through them like a game of Red Rover, laughing and away.

The wych elm's whole crown was gone, only the trunk left, thick stubs of branches poking out obscenely. It should have looked pathetic, but instead it had a new, condensed force: some great malformed creature, musclebound and nameless, huddled in the darkness waiting for a sign.

It was the sheer blazing courage of it that hit me first: the passion of trust it would take, to put your future where your mouth was, no half measures, scoop up all your tomorrows and put them so deliberately, so simply, in the hands of the people you loved best.

and I wanted this girl who was like no girl I had ever known, wanted her not in spite of her moods and her secret bruises and her sad attempts at artifice but because of them, because of them all.

No matter how good you are, this world is always going to be better at this game. It's more cunning than you are, it's faster and it's a whole lot more ruthless. All you can do is try to keep up, know your weak spots and never stop expecting the sucker punch.

One thing marriage counseling instilled in Hilton was a compulsion for open communication. Whether at home or at work, he knew that anything left unsaid was far more dangerous than spoken words could be, no matter how hurtful.

If we're not careful, the time may come when we can't help anyone—and I mean soon. My skin crawls when I think about how many people know about us, and they're not all going to come and say 'Please.' God has been with us so far, but we can't be naive. Even God says not to test Him by being foolish.

I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.

The surest way to open yourself to hurt is to love, and yet you love anyway,

yearned so much to spill her heart... to someone... to reveal every dark part of herself and every flaw, to be unveiled in the light of day... and to still be loved despite her flaws.

Moose had no friends that year. A lot of the time a moose would feel tired and lean against other moose. Only there wouldn't be moose there and the moose would fall.

You always think the best of me,' I said, squeezing water from my hair. 'Even when you shouldn't.' 'That's what love is,' he said, and he got up and walked inside.