Quotes About Vulnerability

Weakness invites aggression. I truly believe that, and I truly believe we are dangerously weak.

Sign of an abusive system: getting angry at other's real needs.

I'm really not the cold fish everyone thinks I am.

That's what happens in love. In the shaded portions where the two spheres of different lives meet, certain fundamentals—moods, loves, fears, angers—can't be hidden. That's the contract.

Another thing about the outbuilding. The designers completely soundproofed the place. The reason for this was so that the principals couldn't hear threats or demands coming from the outside. The corollary was that neither could you hear screams from inside. Night

Stanton clawed his way to the bedside table and managed to grab his knife. He jabbed it into Rhyme. Once, twice. But the only places he could reach were the criminalist's legs and arms. It's pain that incapacitates and pain was one thing to which Lincoln Rhyme was immune.

How was it possible that he could handle Swiss bankers, West End impresarios, senior partners and seasoned solicitors, but was a quivering wreck in the presence of this man?

Only Sebastian really knew what she was going through. Her demons, as she called them. Jessica never stopped chattering whenever they were on their own, but the moment she became the centre of attention, like a tortoise she slipped back into her shell, hoping no one would notice her.

Markets cannot meet the needs of the very poor. The desperately poor are not consumers who will create an immediate profit.

The zipper opened all the way down our spines.

Who are you, anyway? -Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them.

It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.

All sixteen mentioned her jutting ribs, the insubstantiality of her thighs, and one, who went up to the roof with Lux during a warm winter rain, told us how the basins of her collarbones collected water.

Remember that day you said you loved me? Remember that? See, you could do that because you're basically a sane person, who grew up in a loving, sane family. You could take a risk like that. But in my family we didn't go around saying we loved each other. We went around screaming at each other. So what do I do, when you say you love me? I go and undermine it.

We lost them in the vastness of their dresses and found them again, squeezed the pulp of their bodies and inhaled the perfume of their exertion. A few of us grew brave enough to insert our legs between theirs and to press our agony against them.

Jerome was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.

A girl's not a watermelon you plug a hole in to see if it's sweet.

Pregnancy made her feel too much like an animal. It was embarrassing to be so publicly colonized.

It was as if her own heart had been surgically removed from her body and was being kept at a remote location, still connected to her and pumping blood through her veins, but exposed to dangers she couldn't see: her heart in a box somewhere, in the open air, unprotected.

She had just started living like a grown-up and she'd never felt more vulnerable, frightened or confused in her life.

but the corset had the odd power of making her seem somehow more naked; it turned her into a forbidden, armored creature with a soft side inside he had to hunt for.

If this story is written only for myself, then so be it. But it doesn't feel that way. I feel you out there, reader. This is the only kind of intimacy I'm comfortable with. Just the two of us, here in the dark.

What was interesting about being the needy one was how much in love you felt. It was almost worth it. This dependency was what Leonard had guarded himself against feeling all his life, but he couldn't do it anymore. He'd lost the ability to be an asshole. Now he was smitten, and it felt both tremendous and scary.

By cutting off my hair I was punishing myself for loving someone so much. I was trying to be stronger.