Quotes About Vulnerability

[T]hey stretch you on a table. Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anæsthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being.

She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.

Alas, the penis is such a ridiculous petitioner. It is so unreliable, though everything depends on it—the world is balanced on it like a ball on a seal's nose. It is so easily teased, insulted, betrayed, abandoned; yet it must pretend to be invulnerable, a weapon which confers magical powers upon its possessor; consequently this muscleless inchworm must try to swagger through temples and pull apart thighs like the hairiest Samson, the mightiest ram.

Fragility comes in many forms

I know of nothing more difficult than knowing who you are, and having the courage to share the reasons for the catastrophe of your character with the world.

Honey, you are a baby in this world and don't know how to howl yet.

The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.

We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities; it is only the particular ass that does so whom we cant tolerate.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

But evil is a cunning force. It can find the weakness in any man, even the bravest. [...] It only takes a single weak moment to let evil in.

It made me think that no matter how big we grew or how old, there was always a child in us somewhere.

Most animals can be tamed, I suppose," Cork replied. "The question is, do you really want to? Make them tame and they become easy prey for people not as kindly disposed toward them as you are.

It was a feeling that should have been familiar to us by then, but does anyone ever get used to having their heart broken?

The bottom line was that people who leaned too heavily on someone else were setting themselves up for a terrible fall, and they had no one to blame in the end but themselves for the hurt they suffered. Cork had learned the hard way.

it wasn't so much the war as what we took into the war. Whatever cracks were already there the war forced apart, and what we might otherwise have kept inside came spilling out.

I need some-" Cork thought a moment. "I was going to say advice, but the truth is, I need some guidance, Tom." "We all do sometimes. It's not always easy to admit.

The sound of his deep sobs was enough to make a stone weep. It's impossible to witness such open grief and not feel pity wrung from your heart... I couldn't recall ever hearing a grown man cry this way. It made me think that no matter how big we grew or how old, there was always a child in us somewhere.

understood he was crying. Someone

Cork, promise me something." "What?" "You won't do anything that'll get you hurt." "I'm not what you'd call a brave man," he assured her. She sighed, her breath making the hair at the back of his neck shiver. "Maybe not, but you're stubborn, and that's just as bad." After

Our histories, like my father's current body, are structures built of toothpicks.

If we were perfect, the light he shines on us would just bounce right off. But the wrinkles, they catch the light. And the cracks, that's how the light gets inside us.

You stuff your own closet full of skeletons and you wonder what kind of bones everyone else has stuffed away.

I had discovered a terrible vulnerability I myself which I think of not as cowardliness but as an ability to imagine too much.