Quotes About Vulnerability

Jane started crying, which didn't surprise Ray in the least. The woman had the appearance of a professional watering pot—her

A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men and people in general.

Make a list of all the lovers you've ever had. Warren Lasher Ed Rubberhead Catapano Charles Deats or Keats Alfonse Tuck it in your pocket. Leave it lying around, conspicuously. Somehow you lose it. Make mislaid jokes to yourself. Make another list.

Perhaps we had at last reached that stage of intimacy that destroys intimacy.

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grow sarcastic.

Perhaps she drives men away. Perhaps, without even being able to help herself, she just puts men into her ill-tempered car and drives them off: to quarries, dumps, small anonymous bodies of water.

though what bird in the best of circumstances does not look a little stricken?

Those are the love killers. They love you and then they kill you. They're from another planet. Supposedly.

It reminded me of how children always thought too big; how the world tackled and chiseled them to keep them safe.

I said nothing. If she wasn't careful, everyone would rush out of her life, life out of a burning building.

Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he's stupid. That you bet he doesn't know who Coriolanus is. That since you moved in you've noticed he rarely reads. He will give you a hurt, hungry-to-learn look, with his James Cagney eyes. He will try to kiss you. Turn your head. Feel suffocated. (from How)

Losing confidence was more violent than losing love. Losing love was a slow dying, but losing confidence was a quick coup, a floor that opened right up and swallowed.

Like true friends, they take no hardy or elegant stance loosely choreographed from some broad perspective. They get right in there and mutter Jesus Christ! and shake their heads.

When they slept together, she almost cried. He was a kisser, and he kissed and kissed. It seemed the kindest thing that had ever happened to her. He kissed and whispered and brought her a large glass of water when she asked for one.

I can't believe I just asked you to hold my hand,' said Ira, but Mike had already taken it.

When misfortune accumulated, I could feel now, it strafed you to the thinness of a nightgown, sheared you to the sheerness of a slip.

All this wandering that you do, he said, leaning in the window, his face white as a cream cheese, his scar the carved zigzag of a snowmobile across a winter lake. Wind blew handsomely through his hair. How will anyone ever get close to you? I don't know, she said. She shook his hand through the window and then put on her gloves.

What is beautiful is seized, my mother said a final time, speaking of my father, whom she said had been destroyed by too many women, a heart picked over, scratched at, taken, lost. It came to me in bulky bandages, seeming much larger, much more than it really was.

It's not that men fear intimacy,' I said to Eleanor. 'It's that they're hypochondriacs of intimacy: They always think they have it when they don't. Gerard thinks we're very close but half the time he's talking to me like he met me forty-five minutes ago, telling me things about himself I've known for years, and asking me questions about myself that he should know the answers to already. Last night he asked me what my middle name was. God, I can't talk about it.

Think: What has happened to me? Why am I lying like this on top of my covers with too much Jontue and mascara and jewelry, pretending casually that this is how I always go to bed, while a pervert with six new steak knives is about to sneak through my unlocked door. Remember: at Blakely Falls High, Willis Holmes would have done anything to be with you. You don't have to put up with this: you were second runner-up at the Junior Prom.

She would turn from him in bed, her hands under the pillow, the digital clock peeling back the old skins of numbers.

Even his I love you's, she said, were like tiny daggers, like little needles or safety pins. Beware of a man who says he loves you but is incapable of a passionate confession; of melting into a sob.

Well, as to that, all I'll say is, you can't take out a fellow's heart before he's ready to give it up.

The evolution of the human brain is inextricably interwoven with the expansion of culture and the emergence of language. Thus, it is no coincidence that human beings are story tellers. Through countless generations, humans have gathered to listen to stories of the hunt, the exploits of their ancestors, and morality tales of good and evil...Thus, I believe that both the urge to tell a tale and our vulnerability to being captivate by one are deeply woven into the structures of our brains