Quotes About Vulnerability

There's a part in the movie where you can see right through the acting, where you can tell that I'm about to burst into tears

I show them the funny part, the silly part, the laughing part, the crazy part and then the really deep, deep part where I'm talking from my heart to these people. Because I've been through everything they've been through.

And that is how he would describe courage: pretending to be brave. Fearlessness is stupidity. Courage is not letting the fear defeat you.

Being a warrior doesn't mean winning or even succeeding. It means risking and failing and risking again, as long as you live.

So do yourself a favour. Go away and hide somewhere while you lick your wounds. Enjoy your friends and your family, and wait until you've recovered a bit before you start looking for a new partner. And when you do, try to pick someone whose scars are relatively well-healed too – because of course this works the other way round as well. That way you can both see each other as you really are, and start your relationship the way you want to continue it.

There was a feeling in him like a bruise, a purple ache that set between his ribs. He tasted a cry building at the back of his throat. It was too familiar and made him fearful.

Security, alas, can give A threatening impression; Too much defense-initiative Can prompt aggression.

But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

What a subtle, treacherous thing it was to let yourself go that way! Because once you've started it was terribly difficult to stop; soon you were saying "I'm sorry, of course you're right", and "Whatever you think is best", and "you're the most wonderful and valuable thing int he world", and the next thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people.

Her voice had been the only sound in the room for ten minutes or more, and it had been continuous. She seemed keenly aware of this, but aware too that if she allowed herself to stop the house would fill with a silence as thick as water, an impossibly deep, wide pool in which she would flounder and drown.

The whole point of crying was to quit before you cornied it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted: let yourself go and you started embellishing your own sobs, or you started telling about the Wheelers with a sad, sentimental smile and saying Frank was courageous, and then what the hell did you have?

She quickly took a drink to hide her mouth. That mannerism had never changed: whenever Sarah was embarrassed, after she'd told a joke and was waiting for the laughter, or when she was afraid she'd talked too much, she would go for her mouth as if to cover nakedness - with Cokes or popsicles as a child, with drinks or cigarettes now. Maybe all the years of splayed, protruding teeth, and then of braces, had made her mouth the most vulnerable part of her for life.

Proving, proving; and for no other reason than that he was married to a woman who had somehow managed to put him forever on the defensive, who loved him when he was nice, who lived according to what she happened to feel like doing and who might at any time—this was the hell of it—who might at any time of day or night just happen to feel like leaving him. It was as ludicrous and as simple as that.

And they fell asleep like children.

With parched, hard-breathing mouths, with wobbling heads and shaking limbs, they settled themselves in the car like very old and tired people.

And all because, in a sentimentally lonely time long ago, she had found it easy and agreeable to believe whatever this one particular boy felt like saying, and to repay him for that pleasure by telling easy, agreeable lies of her own, until each was saying what the other most wanted to hear...

Emily knew she was going to cry. She tried to avert it with a childhood trick that had sometimes worked before - pressing both thumbnails hard into the tender flesh beneath the nails of her index fingers, so that the self-inflicted pain might be greater than the ache of her swelling throat - but it was no use.

Then he was gone, and Prentice was alone in a silence that rang with all his shrill, unspoken words. He was so alone that the only thing to do was lie back on the bed and roll over and draw up his knees like an unborn baby, staring with dry eyes at a cluster of pink flowers on the wallpaper, knowing he had never been so alone in his life.

he wanted to discuss his strange compulsion to let people know the worst about himself—this confusion of what was weak and ugly in himself with what was "interesting

The whole point of crying was to quit before you cornied it up

The whole point of crying was to quit before you cornied it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted, let yourself go and you started embellishing your own sobs.

No," Dimitri interrupted gently. He moved his face toward mine, our foreheads nearly touching. "It won't happen to you. You're too strong. You'll fight it, just like you did this time." "I only did because you were here." He wrapped his arms around me, and I buried my face in his chest. "I can't do it by myself," I whispered. "You can," he said. There was a tremulous note in his voice. "You're strong—you're so, so strong. It's why I love you.

A gun. I had been brought down by a gun. It was practically comical. Cheaters, I thought.

Wait. You think I'm going to die? That's why you slept with me?