Quotes About Vulnerability

True democracy focuses on the public interest; it defends the common good and protects its citizens - especially the weak and the vulnerable. We maintain that no democracy can survive without the powerful notions of compassion and public service. The level of wealth inequality in this country has gotten so far out of hand, the quantity of compassion so diminished, that the very future of democracy is at stake." ? & Cornel West

Gloria once told me that your best quality is also your worst.

If you lose it every time he tries to come clean, you're encouraging him to lie.

Break your own heart, or they will break it for you.

I guess this is how love is when it comes undone. No matter how tight you knit the stitches, a sharp tug on a loose thread will transform your warm sweater into a mangled heap of yarn that you can't reuse or repair.

Yes," she said, but she seemed confused. "I never thought you did it. I know who I married." "Georgia," I said. "I know who I married, too. You're in me. When I touch you, your flesh communicates with my bones. You think I can't feel how sad you are?" "I'm scared," she said, her fingers transmitting a miserable willingness. "It's hard to start over.

You don't know how demoralizing it is to be a man with nothing to offer a woman.

She pulled away and walked to my bedroom and closed herself in with a little click of the knob. I could have pursued her. A paper clip could best the catch, but when a woman shuts you out, picking the lock won't let you back in.

But how you feel love and understand love are two different things. Now, so many years down the road, I recognize that I was alone and adrift and that he was lonely in the way that only a ladies' man can be. He reminded me of Atlanta, and I reminded him of the same. All these were reasons why we were drawn to each other, but standing with him outside of Maroons, we were past reason. Human emotion is beyond comprehension, smooth and uninterrupted, like an orb made of blown glass.

If my childhood were a sandwich, there would be no meat hanging off the bread.

I kissed her every way I could think of. I kissed her forehead like she was my daughter. I kissed her quivering eyelids like she was my dead mother. I kissed her hard on her cheeks like you do before you kill someone. I kissed her collarbone the way you do when you want more. I pulled her earlobe with my teeth the way you do when you know what someone likes. I did everything, and she sat as pliable as a doll.

how you feel love and understand love are two different things. Now, so many years down the road, I recognize that I was alone and adrift and that he was lonely in the way that only a ladies' man can be. He reminded me of Atlanta, and I reminded him of the same. All these were reasons why we were drawn to each other, but standing with him outside of Maroons, we were past reason. Human emotion is beyond comprehension, smooth and uninterrupted, like an orb made of blown glass.

The last in the series are six or seven of his own stricken face, his arms extended to hold the camera.

Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it's gone, nothing is whole again.

He stood again and cried, not like a baby, but in a way only a grown man can cry, from the bottom of his feet up through his torso and finally through his mouth. When a man wails like that you know it's all the tears that he was never allowed to shed, from Little League disappointment to teenage heartbreak, all the way to whatever injured his spirit just last year.

Then he surprised me by laying his head in my lap, reaching for my arms and closing them around himself like a blanket.

When you have seen your mother shattered, there's no putting her back together. There will always be seams, chipped edges, and clumps of dried glue. Even if you could get her to where she looks the same, she will never be stronger than a cracked plate.

When a man wails like that you know it's all the tears that he was never allowed to shed, from Little League disappointment to teenage heartbreak, all the way to whatever injured his spirit just last year. As Roy howled, my fingers kept worrying a rough patch of skin beneath my chin, a souvenir of scar tissue. When

A paper clip could best the catch, but when a woman shuts you out, picking the lock won't let you back in.

Maybe that's what it means to be in love, to willingly be at the mercy of another person.

All this hardheaded independence isn't helping me or anyone else.

When a man wails like that you know it's all the tears that he was never allowed to shed, from Little League disappointment to teenage heartbreak, all the way to whatever injured his spirit just last year.

Abandonment doesn't have the sharp but dissipating sting of a slap. It's like a punch to the gut, bruising your skin and driving the precious air from your body.

Forests, hills, mountains, rivers, and green streams had no protection in the face of rapacity.