Quotes About Vulnerability

Forever is not granted to any of us," the duchess said. "Even tomorrow is not granted as by right. Any of us can go at any moment.

openness and truth between partners were necessary if the marriage was to have a chance of bringing them any sort of happiness.

No, it is too late, Robert, she said tonelessly. There has been too much pain for you and me. I cannot face making myself vulnerable again.

She received his weight on top of her with a sort of wild relief.

You have a disconcerting way of looking at me so directly that I feel as though you could see right through into my soul, Mr. Cunningham, she said. I suppose it is the artist in you.

She must never look into his eyes, her own unmasked, and say, Choose me, Piers. Choose me!

Oh, Robert, please kiss me, she begged suddenly. Make me forget all my fears.

And while she had held him and opened to him and called his name, because he was Marius and the man she loved, he had merely been using her as almost any man would use a woman who was so obviously available.

Would she never learn not to trust any man—at least not with her emotions?

nearest their window was horribly visible

She might have said yes. It was a shameful admission to have to make even in the privacy of her own thoughts. Perhaps especially there. He exerted a very powerful magic over her. Even more powerful than when she had first known him.

You are right, he said, his words slightly slurred. I have been drinking. And drink makes me sentimental. Tomorrow I shall be able to see you as you really are again and I shall despise myself for having detained you here. But for tonight, Elizabeth, I find you infinitely desirable.

We can all be hurt.

No good can come of it, you know. He will only break your heart.

There must be something terribly wrong with her, Camille thought, that she could neither feel nor attract love. Was it possible that her quest for perfection had somehow deadened an essential part of herself?

He had paid dearly for his secrecy, for his lack of courage in coming to the point.

She was suddenly plagued by a thoroughly novel desire to rush across to where he still sat in his chair, and cradle his head against her breast. She had never seen him vulnerable, had never even dreamed that he had any weakness.

She did not want to think of him as a man who was perhaps essentially lonely.

what it was like to feel all alone in the world and had been willing to share with a near stranger what must have seemed like her shame at the time. "Of course," Lady Overfield continued when Wren said nothing, "I do not live at Brambledean

For very pride's sake she had kept quiet about the humiliation that had ravaged her life. There was all the horror of being pitied if one spoke out.

You shared a very private feeling with me, he said. I have merely returned the compliment.

She had given him all she had to give. She would not feel guilty for that.

He had never even put words to these deepest feelings in his own mind . . . He had never told anyone else. Or even himself. Yet he had told Diana Ingram.

Henry wanted to hate him. She did hate him! But she could not stop herself from caring. She had grown to enjoy his companionship, to need his attention and approval. She had come to love him and want his caresses. She had given herself to him completely on that one night they had had together, and had believed that for him it had been as earth-shattering an experience as it had been for her.