Quotes About Vulnerability

The object that was pinning me haplessly to the ground, like a butterfly on a collector's tray, was of twentieth-century origin and of very specific function. Oh, all right, it was a public lavatory.

And what about you, Scarlett? You've heard lots about me now. What's your story? Take a chip and tell me all.

I had a fluttery feeling in my tummy and my legs felt weak. It was probably the late night catching up with me.

To the end of his life, the strongest man in Iceland was always afraid of the dark.

I've never been shot, but this probably what it feels like, that second of nothingness right before the pain catches up to the bullet.

She was smart and funny and vulnerable and just so goddamned beautiful, the kind of beautiful that was worth being shot down over.

she'll cry, and if she does, I probably will, and then she'll have found a way in, and I will not let her pierce my walls in a Trojan horse of sympathy.

As always, the first instant he sees her, he can feel his heart shut down, the way you do in those first moment after impact, or, he supposes, when you're drowning. Love or panic. The two have always been fairly indistinguishable to him.

I lost something after Hailey died. I'm not sure what to call it, but it's the device that stops ypu from telling the truth when people ask you how you're doing, that vital valve that keeps you deeper, truer emotions under lock and key. I don't know exactly when I lost it, or how to get it back, but for now when it comes to tact, civility, and discretion, I'm an accident waiting to happen, over and over again. Socially, that makes me something of a liability.

If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we'd never leave our bedrooms.

The tears come to my eyes so fast, there's just no way to stop them.

Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are not for public consumption, because they would either be hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are. We don't share thoughts, we share carefully sanitized, watered-down versions of them.

Relationships don't come with a warranty and being in love is no guarantee of a happy ending.

He doesn't so much fall in love as dive-bomb it like a kamikaze pilot, fearless and at full throttle. He used to look at this propensity as a gift, then a curse, and now understands it to be just another way in which he is broken.

I smile. "You were always so good at not covering up." Penny's smile is sad and a little off. "It's the antidepressants. They've obliterated whatever filters I have left.

So what I do now is to pre-empt that by making the up into a virtue, and telling funny stories about how crap I am before people have a chance to notice it for themselves and think maybe I haven't realised.

You have been menaced by giant spiders, nearly smothered in a swamp, and now half drowned and frozen, and you are embarrassed about taking your clothes off in front of me! Does that not seem ridiculous?

I've always wondered why people who love you do that to you – give you photographs where they look beautiful, you not so much.

Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you got your back turned.

I act like shit don't phase me. Inside it drives me crazy, my insecurities could eat me alive.

her shoulder blades, and just below there.

It was like him, too, to love her and admit to it before he knew if she loved him. Maybe only mortals expected to barter their hearts.

The way to get through normal life is to pretend it isn't getting to you. If you let on that you're hurt, the other animals will turn on you and tear you to pieces. Don't attract the attention of predators.

It does sound too easy, doesn't it? But if a man keeps saying, "I want you," a naive girl is drawn in by the ego-trip of her own desirability. The man need not be particularly attractive in himself. It's the girl's vulnerability which traps her. A student from a co-ed school would laugh it off unless she was truly attracted