Quotes About Vulnerability

I was afraid because I didn't want to lose her, and we always lose someone, or they lose us, in the end.

I can't believe I told you all those things and we've ended up talking about how great I am.' 'But we're not. You've confused the two thnigs again. You're not great. You're a shallow, feckless, self-indulgent... wanker.' 'Thanks.

I didn't want people feeling sorry for me, you see. I wanted them to help, even if helping meant saying that they wouldn't help

Let me be clear and accomodative, more like water than ice; and raise my hands to show I mean no harm, and that I'm stupid, and malicious, and if I'm trying to be fearless I know it gives me no right to act like this.

Storing genes, vulnerable informational systems, in the immediate vicinity of the mitochondrial respiratory chains, which leak destructive free radicals, is equivalent to storing a valuable library in the wooden shack of a registered pyromaniac.

Beauty is not always as perfect as we imagine it to be, but it can be damn close if we learn to accept the scary parts or the ugly parts.

The way to win our heart back is to venture again, to risk giving, receiving and trusting again, and of course to risk getting hurt again, but deciding to forgive and to no longer use the hurt or fear to keep ourselves in prison.

He'll admit to his feelings when he's in his cups. The valet nodded. That's true, ma'am. If we could get him drunk. Clara stifled a laugh. I am not certain I would want a man who has to be drunk to admit his love for me.

In her own uniquely spirited way, she had pierced his armor and burrowed unerringly into his heart

Mom? I said. She turned. Can I talk to you about something? Of course, darling. Come here. I took a few steps into the room. There was so much I wanted to say. I need you to be -- I said, and then I started to cry. Be what? she said, opening her arms. Not sad, I said.

Then he almost but didn't say the two sentence he'd been meaning to say for years: part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you

Let's stand under a tree, she said. Why? Because it's nicer. Maybe you should sit on a chair, and I'll stand above you, like they always do with husbands and wives. That's stupid. Why's it stupid? Because we're not married. Should we hold hands? We can't. But why? Because, people will know. Know what? About us. So what if they know? It's better when it's a secret. Why? So no one can take it from us.)

There are times when the kindness of strangers only makes things worse because one realizes how badly one is in need of kindness and that the only source is a stranger.

When at last I came upon the right book, the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn't control what came through it.

Now we'd known each other for two years, the side of my calf was touching his shins, and his stomach was against my ribs. He said, I don't think it's end of world to be my girlfriend. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

After all who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of their loneliness

Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the depravity of strangers, trapdoors, abysses, fires, cars in the rain, from chance.

When I was with Yoav, everything in me that had been sitting stood up. He had a way of looking at me with a kind of unabashed directness that made me shiver. It's something amazing to feel that for the first time someone is seeing you as you really are, not as they wish you, or you wish yourself, to be.

You're lost in your own world, in the things that happen there, and you've locked all the doors. Sometimes I look at you sleeping. I wake up and look at you and I feel closer to you when you're like that, unguarded, than when you're awake. When you're awake you're like someone with her eyes closed, watching a movie on the inside of your eyelids. I can't reach you anymore. Once upon a time I could, but not now, and not for a long time.

But loneliness, true loneliness, is impossible to accustom oneself to, and while I was still young I thought of my situation as somehow temporary, and did not stop hoping and imagining that I would meet someone and fall in love...Yes, there was a time before I closed myself off to others.

There are times when the kindness of strangers only makes matter worse because one realizes how badly one is in need of kindness and that the only source is a stranger.

I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. If I had to bet, it would be on the delivery boy from the Chinese take-out. I order in four nights out of seven. Whenever he comes I make a big production of finding my wallet. He stands in the door holding the greasy bag while I wonder if this is the night I'll finish off my spring roll, climb into bed, and have a heart attack in my sleep.

By heart, this is not an expression I use lightly. My heart is weak and unreliable.

Sooner or later she'll figure out the truth: you're a shell of a man, all she has to do is knock against you to find out you're empty.