Quotes About Vulnerability

Men without wives might as well be men without mothers; they are more orphans than widowers. Men without wives, they lose their spines, their ability to walk tall in the world, even to wipe the shaving foam from their ears. Men need women more than women need men; isn't that the untold secret of the world?

Zach," I said as I lay there "Where did you go? When you were looking for me?" I shifted in his arms, looked into his eyes. "Crazy." His voice was a whisper against my skin. "I went crazy.

I had been much more in love with my wife than she with me, that was all. Somehow, you were supposed to be ashamed of this, as though love were a perpetual jostling for the roles of pursuer and pursued. As if it didn't take more courage to admit that someone held your hopes of happiness in their hands. As if it were a choice.

When you are small, if you reach out, and nobody takes your hand, you stop reaching out, and reach inside, instead. — Amanda Eyre Ward, How to Be Lost . (Ballantine Books; Reprint edition August 30, 2005)

FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

The hardest tumble a man can take is to fall over his own bluff.

Ah, that we could fall into women's arms without falling into their hands.

The first time I kissed you, you had just cut off your hair with a plastic knife. You were in restraints and your lips were completely chapped and dry from the tranquilizers. The next day you tried to kill me with a torn-off piece of bedsheet. I've seen you at your worst. You hardly need to dress up for me.

The only way I can protect him now is to make sure he never understands how easy killing can become.

By the time I found sleep that night, back in the Hawk's Keep, my throat was tight with too many tears unshed, screams unuttered and prayers whose words I could never seem to find.

Vultures devour the fallen. Hyenas destroy the weak. Humans kill that which they fear. Survive and be strong, or die, cornered by your prey, trembling because the night is dark.

Nacola Shardae, damn her feathers, was a true queen. In that single little speech, she managed to hit every vulnerability and fear Danica and I had regarding this child.

If you want to properly tell a story, you have to be willing to write it a thousand ways. And then you must be brave enough to share it with others.

All liars ... lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.

How easily they spoke of love. And yet, when she'd needed the certainty of his feeling for her, he'd let her slip away, never able to bring himself to tell her about the ways in which he'd been changed. He'd been incapable he'd let Nenebah believe the problem lay with her.

I don't trust a man who drinks,' he growled, not bothered about dressing it up. 'A man takes to drinking, then he gets weak, then his mind goes.' Cosca sadly shook his head. 'You have it back to front. A man's mind goes, then he gets weak, then he takes to drink. The bottle is the symptom, not the cause.

If you judge your thoughts worth hearing, pronounce them proudly, push them to every corner of the chamber, fill the hall with your hopes and desires and make every listener share them! If you are ashamed of your thoughts, better to leave a silence.

Surprise makes brave men cowards, strong men weak, wise men fools.

Her knee caught him between the legs with pitiless accuracy, driving the wind from his chest, making him teeter for a breathless moment, then bringing him down like a sledgehammer to a house of cards. As he slid groaning to the carpet in that special, shooting agony that only a blow to the fruits can produce, it was little consolation that he had been right. His Queen was quite evidently a woman of rare and fiery passion.

Armour is part of a state of mind in which you admit the possibility of being hit

They say it's men with nothing to lose you should fear. But it's them who fear most.

When you build your life around only one thing, love only one person, dream only one dream, you risk losing everything at a stroke.

His lip began to tremble and he covered his face with his hands. 'My fault . . . if something were to happen to her . . .' His shoulders shook silently, and Glokta raised his eyebrows. He was used to men crying in his presence of course. But I usually have at least to show them the instruments first.

Sometimes weakness is a better shield than strength,