Quotes About Vulnerability

I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard's study; because he would make love to me I am sending back the key; in his eye's darkroom I can see my X-rayed heart, dissected body: I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard s study.

I inhabit the wax image of myself, a doll's body. Sickness begins here; I am a dartboard for witches.

I said: I must remember this, being small.

I had always imagined myself hitching up on to my elbows on the delivery table after it was all over - dead white, of course, with no makeup and from the awful ordeal, but smiling and radiant, with my hair down to my waist, and reaching out for my first little squirmy child and saying its name, whatever it was.

One thing, I try to be honest. And what is revealed is often rather hideously unflattering.

Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won't notice. My heart is a stopped geranium.

I felt myself shrink to a small black dot against all those red and white rugs and that pine paneling. I felt like a hole in the ground.

I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and say, 'Ah!' in an encouraging way, as if he could see something I couldn't, and then I would find words to tell him how I was so scared, as if I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out.

I have this demon who wants me to run away screaming if I am going to be flawed, fallible. It wants me to think I'm so good I must be perfect. Or nothing. I am, on the contrary, something: a being who gets tired, has shyness to fight, has more trouble than most facing people easily. If I get through this year, kicking my demon down when it comes up, I'll be able, piece by piece, to face the field of life, instead of running from it the minute it hurts.

And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter.

There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart—— It really goes.

How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off? How long can I be Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand, Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon? The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow Lap at my back ineluctably. How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

I cry at everything. Simply to spite myself and embarrass myself.

It is so much safer not to feel, not to let the world touch me.

The still waters Wrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears, A clear Cellophane I cannot crack.

I stared at Buddy while he unzipped his chino pants and took them off and laid them on a chair and then took off his underpants that were made of something like nylon fishnet. "They're cool," he explained, "and my mother says they wash easily." Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed. Buddy seemed hurt I didn't say anything.

I feel gawky and morbid as somebody in a sideshow.

Usually after a good puke you feel better right away. We hugged each other and then said good-bye and went off to opposite ends of the hall to lie down in our own rooms. There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.

I have had my chances. I have tried and tried. I have stitched life into me like a rare organ, And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare. I have tried not to think too hard. I have tried to be natural. I have tried to be blind in love, like other women, Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one, Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I walk, talking to the moon, to the neutral impersonal force that does not hear, but merely accepts my being. And does not smite me down.

I hate saying anything to a group of people. When I talk to a group of people I always have to single out one and talk to him,and all the while I am talking I feel the others are peering at me and taking unfair advantage. I also hate people to ask cheerfully how are you when they know you're feeling like hell and expect you to say Fine

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 e like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

I stared at Buddy while he unzipped his chino pants and took them off and laid them on a chair and then took off his underpants that were made of something like nylon fishnet. 'They're cool,' he explained, 'and my mother says they wash easily.

Para la persona encerrada en la campana de cristal, vacía y detenida como un bebé muerto, el mundo mismo es la pesadilla.