Quotes About Vulnerability

Mark, shaken, realizes he has just made the terrible mistake of not just seeming to be but actually being sincere.

Crying came out of her like weather

He was clearly in love with Amber too, and this time it wasn't the usual water off the back of the duck. Instead, the duck, wounded by a hunter and bewildered because half its head had been shot way, and was still tottering about on its webby feet by the side of the pond. From the one side it looked like a duck usually looks. From the other, it was a different story.

It would be good to be full of holes, she says. Then all the things you can't express would maybe just flow out.

She was so adolescent. Everything about her asked for attention, the way she walked across a room or a shop or across the forecourt of a petrol station, leaning into the air in front of her as if about to lose her balance, mutely demanding that someone – Eve, who else? – put out the flat of her hand and let Astrid push her forehead or her shoulder into it.

Like entering what you think is going to be history and finding endless sad fragility.

If people think you like them, Charlotte said, well, it can go either way. There's a lot of powerplay in liking and being liked. Such a powerful connection, it's a chance to make the world bigger for someone else. Or smaller. That's always a chance we've got.

no one can be strong all the time, no matter how broad their shoulders!

the uneducated grow up to be prey!

And I withdrew into myself when I understood that they wanted to extract every thought in my head, one by one, like decayed teeth.

the little death. What would or could be left of a human being after such an experience?

Hearts don't break...They only crack into a thousand little pieces. If they broke it would be better—because then they wouldn't exist.

People who judge you all the time are not people you go to with real questions and problems. Starting

She rarely cried at life, but certain turns of phrase prompted hot tears to sting her cheeks.

It's just me throwing myself at you, romance as usual, us times us, not lust but moxibustion, a substance burning close to the body as possible without risk of immolation.

Because life's too short to blush, I keep my blood tucked in.

Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.

The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.

You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies.

One has a greater sense of degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.

A young couple — bride eighteen, man twenty-two — came here for their honeymoon. The day after the wedding, he was found to have scarlet fever, and in two days he was dead. How cruel it is when pain and sorrow come to young things, — they are so helpless; what can they do with it? What a rush of desire to go to them and wrap them about in one's long-accustomedness until the little bewildered soul has woven for itself some sort of casing.

Number 40: Love is worth the risk.

I should have been braver myself, shown you it's okay to get hurt along the way.

Courage is not the towering oak That sees storms come and go It is the fragile blossom That opens in the snow.