Quotes About Vulnerability

Our achievements may make us interesting, Tyler, but our darkness makes us lovable.

I think of how people can betray me simply by not caring enough to hide the fact of how little they care.I think of how the person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.

Do you remember that old TV series, Get Smart? Do you remember at the beginning where Maxwell Smart is walking down the secret corridor and there are all of those doors that open sideways, and upside down and gateways and stuff? I think that everyone keeps a whole bunch of doors just like this between themselves and the world. But when you're in love, all of your doors are open, and all of their doors are open. And you roller-skate down your halls together.

Once he entered my life, I promptly forgot all my years of putting on a brave face while browsing at bookstores until closing time, and of having one, two, three beers while watching crime shows and CNN. I completely forgot the hateful sensation of loneliness, like thirst and hunger together pressing on my stomach.

Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being.

You will see the effects of dark secrets making themselves known-- via their minds and bodies and via the stories your friends...will begin telling you...The only payback for all of this-- for the conversion of their once-young hearts into tar--will be that you will love your friends more, even though they have made you see the universe as an emptier and scarier place...

When I was younger I used to worry so much about being alone—of being unlovable or incapable of love. As the years went on, my worries changed. I worried that I had become incapable of having a relationship, of offering intimacy. I felt as though the world lived inside a warm house at night and I was outside, and I couldn't be seen—because I was out there in the night. But now I am inside that house and it feels just the same.

You know how sometimes after an afternoon nap you wake up with the shakes or anxiety? That's what happened to me. I couldn't remember who I was or where I was or what time of year it was or anything. All I knew was that I was. I felt so wide open, so vulnerable, like a great big field that's just been harvested.

I wish I knew how bad I could become. I wish I could get a printout that showed me exactly how susceptible I was to a long list of sins. Gluttony: 23 percent susceptible. Envy: 68 percent susceptible. Lust: 94 percent susceptible. That kind of thing.

If you want to get close to somebody, you have to tell him or her something intimate about yourself. They'll tell you something intimate in return, and if you keep this going, maybe you'll end up in love.

People are leaky.

She felt his shoulders began to convulse, faintly, regularly, almost as if he was weeping. But that was, of course, impossible, as Pendergast would never cry.

El moribundo frente marítimo al final había sucumbido al perverso huracán Yankee Clipper de 1938.

R.'s chemotherapy is going better than expected. Total loss of hair, though. We are praying together for the first time since the early part of our marriage, and I am more filled with love for her than ever. She seems so broken and helpless; but God's love will give her and both of us strength.

The reason they interrogated Amanda all night was to break her. Not get the truth, not get answers, not make Perugia safer, but to break her so that she would say what they wanted her to say. Amanda Knox was interrogated for eight hours. Overnight. She was denied food and water. She was denied the use of a bathroom. In a police station. In a foreign country. In a foreign language. By a dozen different officers. Without being allowed a lawyer.

There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.

I feel more helpless with you than without you.

No person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors.

To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence-- words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.

I have found over the years of working with people, even those who have had very deep and profound awakenings, that most people have a fear of being truthful, of really being honest-- not only with others, but with themselves as well. Of course, the core of this fear is that most people know intuitively that if they were actually truthful and totally sincere and honest, they would no longer be able to control anybody.

Part of being awake is being willing to be crucified. If we think that to be awake means the whole world will agree with us, then we are in a total delusion.

Old men, what are they? Fast fading the leaf, Three-footed they walk, yet frail as a child, As a dream set afloat in the daylight.

We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.

Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety.