“Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy.”
Vulnerable feeling
Vulnerable Quotes — page 22 of 73
“I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.”
“I did the best I could, and in some arenas, my best was not good enough. I've made some bad choices.”
“Do you mind even a little that you are still addicted to people-pleasing, and are still putting everyone else’s needs and laundry and career ahead of your creative, spiritual life? Giving all your life force away, to “help” and impress. Well, your help is not helpful, and falls short.”
“I'm a terrible Christian and meditating is very hard for me, and I do it. I do it badly, like I do a lot of things. I believe in doing things badly.”
“See, I will always have this penchant for what I call kamikaze women. I call them kamikazes because they, you know they crash their plane, they're self-destructive. But they crash into you, and you die along with them.”
“Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.”
“Part of my family were ranchers. So you were expected to be quite macho. You weren't expected to cry. I was the exact opposite of that.”
“When you stand up acoustic in front of an audience, you really are a man without any clothes on. And that can be fun - it depends how much of an exhibitionist you are, I suppose. I quite enjoy it.”
“I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.”
“How much more can you give? Other than, literally, open-heart surgery onstage? Not much. But the only cure you have right now is the honesty of going, this is who you are. I know who I am.”
“A running quarterback, to me, is safer. Because, once I got out [of the pocket], I didn?t run where there were a lot of people. I ran where there was nobody.”
“Ash, ash —- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—— A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.”
“Sometimes I feel so stupid and dull and uncreative that I am amazed when people tell me differently.”
“I keep trying to forget, but I must remember. And gather the scattered continents of a self, once whole. Before they plant flags and boundary my destiny. Push down the watered mountains that blemish this soiled soul before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me. I'll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me. A vaccination for a lesser god's bleak history.”
“I spend my time sitting in train stations, parks, parking lots, cafes, just looking at people - eavesdropping, basically. I'm vulnerable to all of it.”
“he dared to explore her withered neck w/his fingertips…her hips w/their decaying bones, her thighs with their aging veins.”
“I see a huge paradox in me - the intense need to be loved and the search for approval juxtaposed with the need to nurture other people, to be the mother I never had.”
“I didn't want to say "No" because I didn't want people to think I'm not nice. And that, to me, has been the greatest lesson of my life: to recognize that I am solely responsible for it, and not trying to please other people, and not living my life to please other people, but doing what my heart says all the time.”
“I get attached to things: I wear the same jeans for a year.”