Quotes About Vulnerability

It was not so much, she would write in her journal, that she wanted to have sex with women, but that she wanted to disappear inside of them forever. To hide.

Oh sweetheart, do you really think if you seal it up, that the pain's gonna go away?

she watched others tell their drunken bar stories, prostituting their families and their traumas for popularity and booze.

between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. That doesn't mean the weaker one doesn't love the stronger one, she'd pleaded...for my mother what mattered was that as she spoke, she had suddenly identified herself as the weaker one. This revalation sent her reeling. What had she thought all those years but the opposite?

The fine wall of leaden crystal that had protected her heart - somehow numbed her into disbelief - shattered.

She had needed the time to know that this love would not destroy her, and I had, I now knew, given her that time, could give it, for it was what I had in great supply.

News slipped out and the world didn't explode and eventually I could count on passing out. I had a headache in the morning and I always threw up, but Jamie, and everyone, it seemed, liked me when I was drunk. The added bonus: I often didn't remember much.

When he felt his heart hurt he turned into something stronger than a little boy, and he grew up this way. A heart that flashed from heart to stone, heart to stone.

For me the saddest thing was that these animals smelled the brokenness in him – the human defect – and kept away.

A letter is always better than a phone call. People write things in letters they would never say in person. They permit themselves to write down feelings and observations using emotional syntax far more intimate and powerful than speech will allow.

Never offer your heart to someone who eats hearts who finds heartmeat delicious but not rare who sucks the juices drop by drop and bloody-chinned grins like a God.

A writer's heart, a poet's heart, an artist's heart, a musician's heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world...

I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read.

And when they spy on us let them discover us loving

This book is dedicated with tenderness and respect to the blameless vulva

You know, he say, you use to remind me of a bird. Way back when you first come to live with me. You was so skinny, Lord, he say. And the least little thing happen, you looked about to fly away.

That politicians who smiled at us and kissed our babies blue eyes shining with triumph well knew we were falling into our graves kicked by them as they counted our votes.

I lie back on the bed and haul up my dress. Yank down my bloomers. Stick the looking glass tween my legs. Ugh. All that hair. Then my pussy lips be black. Then inside look like a wet rose. It a lot prettier than you thought, ain't it? she say from the door.

I began to feel humiliated. It felt like I was abusing myself. Hiding something important that was not really at fault.

But when I hear them together all I can do is pull the quilt over my head and finger my little button and titties and cry.

I'm afraid, my dear, we were radiant.

She say, I love you, Miss Celie. And then she haul off and kiss me on the mouth. Um, she say, like she surprise. I kiss her back, say, um, too. Us kiss and kiss till us can't hardly kiss no more. Then us touch each other. I don't know nothing bout it, I say to Shug. I don't know much, she say. Then I feels something real soft and wet on my breast, feel like one of my little lost babies mouth. Way after while, I act like a little lost baby too.

breaking the heart opens it.

I remember one time you said your life made you feel so ashamed you couldn't even talk about it to God, you had to write it, bad as you thought your writing was.