Quotes About Vulnerability

Evie didn't mind yelling, but she hated feeling judged. It got under her skin and made her feel small and ugly and unfixable.

We're all damaged somehow.-A Great and Terrible Beauty

All the times I say, 'Don't see me'? With you, I wish I had an opposite power: See me. See me, Evie. See all of me. There's a fella who loves you right here. I'm not perfect. I'm a handful. But you know what? So are you. There. Not sugarcoating it.

Jericho lay back down on his side, watching her breathe just an arm's length from him. She was not beautiful while she slept; her mouth hung open and she snored very lightly, and this, despite everything that had happened, made him smile.

He loved her. Was in love with her. Had always loved her. And it seemed that she loved him, too. It was funny how the world could change on a dime like that. One minute, you were some poor chump pining after a girl you thought didn't feel the same way about you, and the next, you were lying together, arms entwined, chest to chest, so close you could feel her heartbeat under her soft skin. You were looking into her eyes and seeing your whole future written there.

It was funny how their odd little family of friends had changed him. Made him feel safe. Theta, Memphis, Henry, Jericho, Mabel, Ling, Isaiah, and especially Evie. They'd been there for him. Opened the parts of him he was afraid would be closed off forever. Why had he wasted so much time bottling up his feelings? What did that ever get anybody but dumb fights? He had friends. He had a home in them. And Evie was home, too.

Without further warning, the sky opens up and cries.

Because I'm not enough, she thought. That was the terrible echo shouting up at her: Fraud, fraud, fraud. She got drunk and talked too much and danced on tables. She had a temper and a sharp tongue, and she often blurted out things she instantly regretted. Worst of all, she suspected that was who she truly was—not so much a bright young thing as a messy young thing.

It's as if I've inherited a skin I cannot quite fit, and so I walk about constantly pulling and and tugging, pinning and pruning, trying desperately to fill it out, hoping that no one will look at me struggling and say, 'That one there- she's a fraud, Look how she doesn't fit at all.

For once, Evie didn't know what to say. She hadn't really thought of her uncle as very human. He was more like a textbook who occasionally remembered to put on a tie. But it was clear that he was, indeed, human, with a deep wound named Rotke.

I don't know. Sometimes, I feel nothing, and I'm so afraid. Afraid I'll stop feeling anything at all. I'll just slip away inside myself...I just need to feel something A Great and Terrible Beauty, Page 177, by

All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day.

People you loved could be gone in a breath. So why didn't knowing that make it any easier to be vulnerable? To tell people that you loved them, that you were hurting, that you were afraid, or that, sometimes, at five in the morning, you were so alone in your own skin that you watched the weak light play across the ceiling, willing it toward dawn?

I've been poked and prodded in places I'd always prided myself on keeping untouched for that one special doctor who gives me a ring and a promise someday.

I'm floating inside my skin. I could go on floating like this for days. Right now, the real world with its heartbreak and disappointments is just a pulse against the protective membrane we've drunk ourselves into. It's somewhere outside us, waiting. A Great and Terrible Beauty, Page 141, by

It was hard to feel safe in the world when you were a girl.

We're never prepared for how much we love our children, for how much we wish we could protect them by being perfect.

God save me from a woman's tears, for I've no strength against them.

You must work always to understand your own heart so that it cannot be used against you.

You couldn't be perfect enough to keep the world from betraying you.

She holds and I do not break away, and that is something after all. We lie there, tethered to each other by the fragile promise of our fingers while the night grows bolder. Unafraid, it opens its mouth and swallows us whole.

You can never really know someone completely. That's why it's the most terrifying thing in the world, really - taking someone on faith, hoping they'll take you on faith too. It's such a precious balance, it's a wonder we do it at all.

It was so hard to feel safe in the world when you were a girl.

Don't tell anybody, but sometimes, I just don't want to sparkle.