Quotes About Vulnerability

Taking one's chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and cling to a plastic duck.

Yes,' I said. 'There are trustworthy people in this world, but you have to take such unacceptable risks to find out who they are.

I'm not great at dating, but I need to do it to relax.

I have an internal protectiveness where it's like, if it comes to just me, as frightened as I am of losing someone I love or things going sour or simply being alone, there is a dark place in my brain where I'm like, It could happen and I'm okay, I'm prepared.

Don't be afraid to feel as angry or as loving as you can, because when you feel nothing, it's just death.

My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.

Gas stations are considering hiring security guards. Why are they getting security guards? We're the ones getting robbed.

When a child is traumatized, something more discrete and more specific happens than a general loss of capacity for love and work. An ever-present, ever-draining abscess forms. The child goes on living an ordinary life. But if something touches the traumatic "abscess," the child hurts.

Most of us remain strangers to ourselves, hiding who we are, and ask other strangers, hiding who they are, to love us.

When we give ourselves in love we become our most vulnerable. We are never safe. We become open to disappointment and hurt.

We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be.

When love is accompanied with deep intimacy, it raises us to the highest level of human experience. In this exalted space, we can surrender our egos, become vulnerable and know levels of joy and well-being unique among life experiences. We attain a glimpse of the rapture that can be ours. Boundaries are blurred, there are no limitations and we rejoice in union. We become one and, at the same time, both.

Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself.

to love is to risk, not being loved in return. to hope is to risk pain. to try is to risk failure. but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in my life is to risk nothing.

The husband who doesn't tell his wife everything probably reasons that what she doesn't know won't hurt him.

I am not strange but I feel queer. I am like that sometimes. I feel like crying all the time. It is very silly but it will pass.

It's not so much that he can't fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary.

The dam of my eyes broke, and tears flooded the land.

For those we are born to speak to we need prepare nothing, the lines are ready, everything is there.

I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.

When he undressed at night he was like a diplomat or a judge. A white body, gentle and powerless, emerged from his clothes, his position in the world lay tumbled on the floor, fallen from his ankles...

If you can overcome the occasional angst, you may have the chance to see some interesting things, perhaps the same things the tour buses bring people to see, but purified by solitude, if you will. In any case, do not stay in the hotel room. That is the only place you are vulnerable.

A friend is someone you can really talk to—cry with, if necessary. I've made very few. One.

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods; / They kill us for their sport