Quotes About Vulnerability

I had once left Coop because I wanted to see if I could be the best, if I could make my own way in the world. But living for months with the Fishers made me se the value of intrinsically knowing there was someone to help me up if I stumbled. -Ellie, Plain Truth

When you let people into the inner sanctum of your life, you risk having them see the heart of you.

She knew how you went about falling in love; she did not know how you went about falling into trust.

She was the only one for whom the house didn't have to be cleaned, for whom she didn't have to wear her makeup, and around whom she could say anything without fear of repercussions, or of looking truly stupid.

Babies are such blank slates. They don't come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don't like. They don't come into this world with anything, really, except a need for comfort. And they will take it from anyone, without judging the giver.

Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we've wounded the people we are trying to protect.

He doesn't look people in the eye. He says that's how someone can steal your soul. Amen to that.

I tell myself that I've invited him along to add to the thrill -- one more person who knows only makes it more exciting. But it's really because there are some nights when you just want to know there's someone else besides you in this wide world.

A human heart breaks harder when it's dropped from a greater height.

people who didn't talk about their problems got to pretend they didn't have any. People who discussed what was wrong, on the other hand, fought and ached and felt miserable.

He doesn't look people in the eye. He says that's how someone can steal your soul.

The reason you hold on to someone too tightly isn't always to protect them—sometimes it's to protect yourself.

She did not understand this but then there was much in the world she did not understand. Raw love, like raw heartache could blindside you. It could make you forget what you did not know to focus exclusively on those few pieces you could commit to heart.

Jack could feel the fissures beginning even now, the hard shell he'd promised to keep in place so that no one, ever, would get close enough to hurt him again.

Why didn't you tell me? Delia says, stung. Why don't any of us tell you anything? I respond. We love you.

The baby's body lay in a bassinet. He was the size of a half loaf of bread, his bones light as a bird's and stretched with thin skin.

No matter what you do for someone-no matter if you feed him a bottle as a baby or curl up with him at night to keep him warm or give him food so he's not hungry-make one wrong move at the wrong moment, and you become someone unrecognizable.

Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain range, battled on the front lines. All you wanted to do was tuck it away, safe from natural disasters and violence and prejudice and sarcasm, but that was not an option. You lived in daily fear of watching it burst, of breaking it yourself. Somehow

We are all just canvases for our scars.

When you fall in love, it's because you find someone who fills all your empty spaces. When you fall out of love, it's because you realize that you're both broken.

Me, I like him because of one of Rocco's other things: he doesn't look people in the eye. He says that's how someone can steal your soul.

When you find the person you are supposed to love, you will know by staring deeply into her eyes. Well, that's a deal breaker for me. It is hard for me to explain why it is so difficult to look into people's eyes. Imagine what it would be like if someone sliced your chest with a scalpel and rummaged around inside you, squeezing your heart and lungs and kidneys. That level of complete invasion is what it feels like when I make eye contact.

There it was, shiny and silver, pinned to the requisite position on his chest-a shield that covered his heart but had not been able to protect it.

He taught me that if a body is easily crushed, it develops a weapon to prevent that from happening.