Quotes about Vulnerability

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.

Our most meaningful relationships are based on a longing for expansion rather than a preoccupation with comfort and security. To live exuberantly—to fully know and be fully known by another—we must be prepared to illuminate the dark spots in our most intimate relationships and in our selves.

The harder we press on a violin string, the less we can feel it. The louder we play, the less we hear.… If I "try" to play, I fail; if I race, I trip. The only road to strength is vulnerability. —STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH

I was still afraid to sing in front of people before 'Glee.'

You read glowing things and it doesn't feel deserved. You read things that are critical and it cuts you to the bone.

You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.

Of all powers, love is the most powerful and the most powerless. It is the most powerful because it alone can conquer that final and most impregnable stronghold which is the human heart. It is the most powerless because it can do nothing except by consent.

The writers who get my personal award are the ones who show exceptional promise of looking at their lives in this world as candidly and searchingly and feelingly as they know how and then of telling the rest of us what they have found there most worth finding. We need the eyes of writers like that to see through. We need the blood of writers like that in our veins.

We are all such escape artists, you and I. We don't like to get too serious about things, especially about ourselves. When we are with other people, we are apt to talk about almost anything under the sun except for what really matters to us, except for our own lives, except for what is going on inside our own skins. We pass the time of day. We chatter. We hold each other at bay, keep our distance from each other even when God knows it is precisely each other that we desperately need.

If the truth is worth telling, it is worth making a fool of yourself to tell.