Quotes About Vulnerability

She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all.

Everytime you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart.

I've been clinging to this world like a discarded shell of an insect stuck to a branch, about to be blown off forever by a gust of wind.

I'm scared, she said. These days I feel like a snail without a shell. I'm scared too, I said. I feel like a frog without any webs. She looked up and smiled. Wordlessly we walked over to a shaded part of the building and held each other and kissed, a shell-less snail and a webless frog.

sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody.

I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anybody else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too.

Ever since that happened to me, I haven't been able to give myself to anyone in this world.

There are no truly strong people. Only people who pretend to be strong.

The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.

If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back.

He sometimes wondered if she had become involved with him just so that she could cry in someone's arms. Maybe she can't cry alone, and that's why she needs me.

Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws.

Just speak your mind honestly. That's the best thing. It may hurt a little sometimes, and someone may get upset, but in the long run, it's for the best.

We returned to the hotel and had intercourse. I like that word intercourse . It poses only a limited range of possibilities.

Toru: What happens when people open their hearts? Reiko: They get better.

The most dangerous creature here would have to be me. So maybe I'm just scared of my own shadow.

No, we weren't lovers, but in a way we had opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The thought caused me a good deal of grief. What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for--and to do it so unconsciously.

You can't go anywhere if you just resign yourself to being attacked. A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person.

That's good. I was worried. Of course, I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. I'd hate to think they were obvious to anybody else. Especially at the swimming pool in the summer.

There was something odd for him about not feeling lonely. The very fact that he had ceased to be lonely caused him to fear the possibility of becoming lonely again.

I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws.

Everybody burns out in this world; amateur, pro, it doesn't matter, they all burn out, they all get hurt, the OK guys and the not-OK guys both. That's why everybody takes out a little insurance. I've got some too, here at the bottom of the heap. That way, you manage to survive if you burn out. If you're all by yourself and don't belong anywhere, you go down once, and you're out. Finished.

Anyway, I'm in bed with her, with her bracelets. Her face is a blank, so I darken the lights. Off go her silky undergarments. The bracelets are all she has on. They glint slightly, a pleasant muffled clinking on the sheets. I have a hard-on. Which, halfway down the ladder, is what I noticed. Just great. Why now? Why didn't I get an erection when I needed one? And why was I getting so excited over two lousy bracelets? Especially under this slicker, with the world about to end.

I'm human, after all. I was hurt. But whether it was a lot or a little I can't say.