Quotes About Vulnerability

I had discovered that there was something more painful than falling in love with someone who hasn't fallen for you; hurting that person-hurting him and not being able to do anything about it.

Hey, does my stupidity give you the right to bruise a tender heart? Yeah, yeah. I'm bruising a heart made of Play-Doh.

you can?t always choose how you love a person. Love isn?t logical or fair. It just happens.

I felt mocked. That's what I get for trusting you. He took a step back. Excuse me! Trust doesn't mean you get the response you want from someone, but that you'll get an honest response, and that the other person will stick by you even when you can't agree. Stick by you for how long, through how much? I wondered. What is the expiration date on trust?

Yes, except that nothing sleeps inside but furniture, and that's probably gone to pieces by now. Time gets into anything; yes, indeed it does; and weather helps it.

At once, she dropped her gaze 2 the floor so she wouldn't have 2 meet the stares because she knew exactly how she looked, which was bad, very bad, extra bad from the top of her dyed head to the tip of her tennis-shoed toes. She had an enormous urge to look up and say to the class, "I'm prettier than this. Really.

It's still two human beings trying to get along, so it's going to be complicated. And love is always complicated. But humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody—really want him—it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.

So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?

every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage.

perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat

I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay.

Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.

I do forget sometimes how much it means for certain men—for certain people—to be able to provide their loved ones with material comforts and protection at all times. I forget how dangerously reduced some men can feel when that basic ability has been stripped from them. I forget how much that matters to men, what it represents.

Elizabeth Gilbert

All I could say was, I don't know what to do. I remember her taking me by the shoulders and looking me in the eye with a calm smile and saying simply, Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.

There's a part of me which has always wanted to hear a man say, Let me take care of you forever, and I have never heard it spoken before. Over the last few years, I'd given up looking for that person, learned how to say this heartening sentence to myself, especially in times of fear. But to hear it from someone else now, from someone who is speaking sincerely...

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

David was catnip and kryptonite to me.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.

I have never created anything in my life that did not make me feel, at some point or another, like I was the guy who just walked into a fancy ball wearing a homemade lobster costume.

Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with.

This is intimacy: the trading of stories in the dark.