Quotes About Vulnerability

How well do we really know anyone? We only know what people are willing to reveal.

Just then I realized how badly I had missed the whole idea. I had failed them and myself. In trying to be strong for them, I had cheated them out of opportunities to strengthen me. Guilt overwhelmed me, because I could—at last—see their gifts to me.

In the artist of all kinds I think one can detect an inherent dilemma, which belongs to the co-existence of two trends, the urgent need to communicate and the still more urgent need not to be found....

And the most dangerous place on earth— Is where you're safe.

Ser invencible depende de uno mismo. Ser vulnerable, del enemigo"».

If you let people believe that you are weak, sooner or later you're going to have to kill them.

Your strengths are your weaknesses. The more you try to protect something, the more vulnerable you make it.

I hope that you will be faced with difficult choices and decisions, trials that won't undo you, but that will drive you toward reflection and understanding. Trust that your fears will sometimes tell you about your desires. You will see that you can survive the terror that comes with growth and change, with vulnerability and risk.

Write about what you're afraid of.

I sat up, and the room was full of a man with a gun. He was standing one pace in from the doorway. The light was off now, but gray daylight ebbed in the airshaft window, and unfortunately I could see him. He was wearing a hat and an overcoat and a gun, and the gun was pointed at me, and his eyes were looking at me, and his eyes appeared to be made of slate.

When I was young, my language wore coats and shirts and trousers, neckties, bespoke shoes. In my lifetime as a writer I have cast off layer after layer of clothing in pursuit of nudity.

See how the fearful chandelier trembles above you each time you open your mouth to sing. Sing.

At the heart of all anger, all grudges, and all resentment, you'll always find a fear that hopes to stay anonymous.

I read somewhere, how important it is in life, to not necessarily be strong. But to feel strong.

I will have no locked cupboards in my life.

I am tapping into a place in you that is unexplored, and very dangerous, but I think essential to the creative life of an artist.

Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are.

The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain - to just be with it all.

Be yourself, fill your life with good people, and don't get a big head. It can all be gone tomorrow.

Once you expose your private life, if you give one little bit, the floodgates are open and everyone's got a free range for you.

There is a time in a boy's life when the sweetness is pounded out of him; and tenderness, and the ability to show what he feels, is gone.

Step out from behind the words. When you're a writer you can imagine that the words speak for you and are you, but they're not. You are this living breathing bad hair day kind of person.

The rewards go to the risk-takers, those who are willing to put their egos on the line and reach out to other people and to a richer, fuller life for themselves.

In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.