Quotes About Vulnerability

I'm safe in your arms. But you have never been safe in mine.

He doesn't understand that when you crack something open and everything spills out, you've got nothing left but a shell.

I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them. ( Initiation )

I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.

I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I'd cry for a week.

How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.

How frail the human heart must be?a mirrored pool of thought.

If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.

Please don't expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand. (This quote is probably wrongly attributed to Sylvia Plath)

I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn't say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed.

Wear your heart on your skin in this life.

I want so obviously, so desperately to be loved, and to be capable of love.

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. --from Tulips, written 18 March 1961

The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.

And I, love, am a pathological liar.

Let me not be weak and tell others how bleeding I am internally; how day by day it drips, and gathers, and congeals.

Then it hit me and I just blurted, 'I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.

Not being perfect hurts.

I don't know how long I kept at it... I felt reasonably safe, streched out on the floor, and lay quite still. It didn't seem to be summer any more

I suppose if I gave myself the chance I could be an alcoholic.

God, it was good to let go, let the tight mask fall off, and the bewildered, chaotic fragments pour out. It was the purge, the catharsis.

Talking about my fears to others feeds it.

I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.