Quotes About Vulnerability

The idea of being vulnerable leaves a lot of room for choice. There is always room to be less foldable, more evil.

These days, our technology treats us as though we were objects and we get in the habit of objectifying one another as bits of data, profiles viewed. But only shared vulnerability and human empathy allow us to truly understand one another.

When one becomes accustomed to "companionship" without demands, life with people may seem overwhelming. Dependence on a person is risky but it also opens us to deeply knowing another.

But in creative conversations, in conversations in which people get to really know each other, you usually have to tolerate a bit of boredom.

We have the greatest chance of success if we recognize our vulnerability.

empathy requires vulnerability.

It was a rare man who didn't mind having a woman dump all her problems and insecurities in his lap.

underneath it all she still bore all the hurts of a kid who'd only wanted to fit in and somehow never had.

Moths and flames, mankind and death--there is little difference.

General Grant had a simple, childlike recipe for meeting life ... I am terribly afraid, but the other fellow is afraid, too.

I looked at mother with adoration in my own eyes, and when she had taken the kerosene lamp and had gone away, and when we boys were all again curled quietly like sleeping puppies in the bed, I cried a little, as I am sure father must have cried sometimes when there was no one about. Perhaps his getting drunk, as he did on all possible occasions, was a way of crying too.

People in your own family are likely at any moment to do strange, sometimes hurtful things to you. You have to watch them.

It is no use. I find it impossible to work with security staring me in the face.

Because you showed one face to all the rest of the world, and another to me.

Despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.

They're safe,'' he said. "And you're not made of glass". He swept me up in his arms. I laughed. "And I'm not made of glass." He carried me into our room and kicked the door shut behind us.

we're broken open, brought to our knees, dragged into the underworld not to be tortured or because there's something wrong or disordered with us, but because there's something right and beautiful inside that is longing to be seen and known.

But when we accept the fact that anxiety, depression, loneliness, powerlessness, grief, joy, and exhilaration are all part of the design, we step out into the rain and perhaps even dance a little.

We avoid pain because we live in a culture that teaches us to avoid pain. We avoid pain because we don't know that turning toward pain — and I use pain as an umbrella term for anything uncomfortable that we wish to avoid feeling — is one of the secret pathways to joy.

A relationship to me is never about the romance.

I want a couple of things clear," he said quietly. "First…I think you're beautiful. You've always been beautiful, and nothing changes that." Laying his palm against her chest so that it covered one of the scars, he said, "This sure as hell doesn't. Got it?

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.

The doctors said it was something called commotio cordis, a direct blow to the heart between beats. It was instant, a fluke, and deadly.

And then Shin started to make gentle love to me. Every touch drove me wild and I began to moan and beg him to do it harder. Suddenly he stopped and looked at me. "Shoko! You're high right now, aren't you?" "What?" "I can tell when you are. Your reactions aren't the same at all." His words made me feel dirty. The innocent version of me, the girl who had walked happily hand in hand with Shin, no longer existed.