Quotes About Vulnerability

How ridiculous were the attentions the weak paid one another in the shadow of the strong!

He looked so vulnerable and fallible, his shoulders slumped, his head down, that Carol's impulses overrode the decision she'd taken only minutes before to play it cool. She stepped forward and pulled Tony into a tight hug. 'If anyone can do it, you can,' she whispered against his chin like a cat marking its territory.

Those least responsible for climate change are worst affected by it.

When I talk to people about what makes us human, some people say it's our tears. Because we are the only ones who weep, only we can feel true sorrow. When I hear this, I remember Isiro's face, her anguished eyes as she cried for Mikeno, how she screamed at the keepers with her teeth bared and pushed at the poles. How she dashed back to his body and dug her fingers into his chest as if the strength of her grip could bring him back. There is sorrow without tears. Of course there is.

There is something in the eyes of a bonobo that you don't see in those of a tiger or a shark. They are human eyes, but not the cautious glimpse of a stranger you pass on a city street, or the pretended interest of a shrink you're paying $300 an hour. Or someone you think you recognize but don't. The eyes of a bonobo are the eyes of your best friend or a lover or a priest. They see into you. They see nothing else. They invite confession.

The power of sadness has always amazed me.

I wanted you to know me.

You won't feel under-dressed when with your naked heart you come to me, for mine is past the point to dress for company.

My mother used poetry and the arts as a thermometer—if I cried, it meant my heart had not grown cold, my sensibility was alive and well.

Ridicule is a public confession of fear.

Improvement in the teaching of science is imperative; for students of latent scientific ability are particularly vulnerable to high school teaching which fails to awaken interest or to provide adequate instruction.

I felt, by turns, numb, hot with a monstrous embarrassment, and sick as though I'd eaten splinters of glass and was slowly shredding inside.

People tell me I look skinny when they want something from me. What does she want from me?

How do you feel?" Ewa asks. "Betrayed." "By who?" she says. "Whom," I say. "Who?" "I feel betrayed by my femininity.

Could I write an autobiographical novel, I wonder? Can one make a book out of the very essence of one's self? Perhaps so, if one was left with one's gift stripped bare of all that made it worth having, and nothing else was left...

In the kingdom of glass everything is transparent, and there is no place to hide a dark heart.

We spend the next half an hour doing horrible things with our bodies. We line up and climb the first level of the scaffolding, holding on for dear life, and then we stand there on a three-foot narrow strip that is the ledge that hugs the wall, many of us shaking from a combination of terror and the abuse of previously unused muscle groups.

Weakness invites contempt from weak people.

I think the Mailman is taking us on one at a time, starting with the weakest, drawing us in far enough to learn our True Names—and then destroying us.

This was the pretech experience, that even if you had no enemies the world itself could kill you. And

I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.

He turns toward me. I want to touch him, but I'm afraid of his bareness; afraid that he will make me bare too. 'Is this scaring you, Tris?' 'No,' I croak. I clear my throat. 'Not really. I'm only…afraid of what I want.' 'What do you want?' Then his face tightens. 'Me?' Slowly I nod.

Are you asking me to undress, Tris?' A nervous laugh gurgles from my throat. 'Only ... partially

I feel bare. I didn't realize I wore my secrets as armor until they were gone and now everyone sees me as I really am.