Quotes About Vulnerability

There's nothing more dangerous than a powerful person who is imagining themselves as being powerless.

I feel like, throughout lots of my life, especially growing up, I felt powerless.

The pain of powerlessness is excruciating. It is the most painful experience in the earth school, and everyone shares it.

At the beginning, I experienced writing as a sort of constraint. Starting so young as a writer is pitiable: it's beyond your powers; you have to lay bare things that are very heavy, and you don't have the means for that.

I've got Tourette's, practically. I'll tell anyone anything.

You could be the best in the world, but it doesn't matter. It's four-ounce gloves. I've been dropped in practice with a knee to the body. I take a good knee to the body and break my ribs in the fight, I lost. I mean, it's a fight.

Sanctions and workfare make it easier for employers to impose insecure practices on desperate people.

Being seen means that your being is held by the other person without comment, without praise or blame or indifference - just with some kind of open care.

You get to a certain point where you feel comfortable. You've got everybody praising you for what you do where you come from, sometimes you let down your guard.

Why do I pray? Because I never know what's going to pop out of my mouth.

It's pretty cathartic for me to write a letter to God and tell him what I'm praying for that day or what I'm going through emotionally.

I wrote in my first book that I was broken, and now it just makes me mad every time. This is why writing words in books is so precarious. This is why Jesus only wrote in the sand, right? I just - I hate that I wrote that.

The thing about Precious, she's so far from a Hollywood character. She's so honest and real, I definitely felt like I knew her.

You just need to create and be open with that energy. The second that you are precious with it, it's almost like you showing the world you have a limited amount.

I think any time you hear that you're about to paralyze yourself, or even worse, it's just scary because you start to realize how precious life is.

I like playing characters who are out there on the edge, where they can explode at any moment or fall off the precipice.

I'd rather not have to come face to face with predators. I'd rather not be harassed. But no. Those weren't my choices to make, were they?

When I worry about risks, I worry about the biggest ones, particularly those that are difficult to predict - the ones I call small but deep holes. While odds are you will avoid them, if you do fall in one, it's a long way down and nearly impossible to claw your way out.

I didn't feel as though, when I was a child, I had much control of my environment. I felt powerless. And that gave me a sense of predictability.

Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.

I would hate now to be married. It does occur to me on occasion that, if I fall and hit my head, there will be no one to make the phone call. But who wants to think about that disaster, I'd prefer not to.

I don't have those great, strong, glowing pregnancies.

People don't say they're pregnant until the second trimester. I intellectually understand that you don't want the whole world to know your business, but at the same time, what does that mean? You don't tell your employers you're pregnant, but then when you miscarry, no one knows you miscarried. Miscarrying is a horrible, painful event.

When they do actually get pregnant, most expectant mothers understandably keep the whole thing a secret because of how fragile the first four months can be.