Quotes About Vulnerability

the flesh no one seems now to care to touch.

and for an instant he's alive toward me, a gem of sea of pond in his eye. Then that retreat into himself, which always moved me, as if there were a sideways gravity, in him, toward some vanishing point.

I think he had come, in private, to feel he was dying, with me

We said, to each other, I think, whatever came into our minds—put there by what the other had just said—as if we dropped, one by one, taking turns, those intensely dried paper flowers of my childhood, into a glass of water, and watched them uncurl, fast, uneven, and bright—and tossed another.

I don't know if I could do it, actually—aim my right hook at my mother's little glass jaw, and follow through, reckless to express myself

I am falling, and I do not feel that there are rocks, below, I think I may go on falling, like my own flesh, for the rest of my life

I feel like a landscape, a ground without a figure.

the sight pierces me with tenderness, he was suffering, then, as I would soon.

If you've ever been treated like a goddess, I'll tell you, it messes with your judgment. You forget, if you ever knew it to begin with, that lots of goddesses end up sacrificed on some altar or other.

By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we're more likely to be changed by it.

Often we can achieve an even better result when we stumble yet are willing to start over, when we don't give up after a mistake, when something doesn't come easily but we throw ourselves into trying, when we're not afraid to appear less than perfectly polished.

We often get caught up in our own reactions and forget the vulnerability of the person in front of us.

Why had the counterfeit timbre of his voice rung true to me? What had prompted me to believe a man who spent most of his life dissembling? Why had I, usually so suspicious, become so credulous and simpleminded in his presence? Was it just that I had wanted to hear someone tell me he loved me? Was it just that the words he spoke, the vows he swore, were so freighted with sweetness that they would have seemed true no matter who spoke them?

Everybody's afraid of love, because love is what hurts the most.

Women can fake an orgasm, but men can fake an entire relationship.

I might be manipulating you to create risk for myself.

Conflict is a form of intimacy, and he did not want to be close to anyone.

Love, she told me, didn't have anything to do with walking through a piece of glass.

She leans over Roop the way Sardarji leaned over Satya the years she cried for children, brushing tears from Roop's heavy lashes with her lips. She strokes her head as a mother would, says. "Slpee little one, we are together now." And Roop sleeps, overcome by the afternoon heat. While Satya watches her. So trusting, so very stupid.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

God wants interdependence from us, not self-reliance . He puts us in a place of risk-taking so that we will connect to— and stay connected to—Him.

We'd known enough girls jilted by Americans promising marriage and plane tickets. Two girls in my neighborhood had babies by men who had returned to the United States and left false addresses. The faces of their mixed-race kids declared their humiliation to everyone.

Also, I knew that if I said a single word, I would burst into tears, as I always did, always had, my entire life, whenever anything difficult had to be discussed. It always was too scary; a threat I had felt since childhood that at any moment a relationship might disappear with a poof because of something little I had done or said.

I felt like I was the tin man, the lion, and the scarecrow in one: I could not feel my heart, I had no courage, I could not use my brain,