Nadine Gordimer Quotes

but sometimes one person can hold you up in life, keep you standing, and without that hand to hold, you can find yourself free-falling no matter how strong you used to be, no matter how hard you try to remain steady.

But relying on one person for your every need is so dangerous. One set of hands isn't enough to keep you from falling.

But I like to know that someone is stronger than I am. I want to be able to know that if I get tired, somebody is there to hold up the fort. I like knowing that I can't pick a refrigerator alone. God did not make me strong enough to do that.

I trust you because I need you.

He who holds me by a thread is not strong; the thread is strong.

Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness, and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

...but even strong women need an arm to lean on now and then. (Anna Whitney in Glory in Death)

We can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.

Sometimes our strengths are also our weaknesses. Sometimes to be strong you have to first be weak. You have to share your burdens; you have to lean on other people while you face your problems and yourself.

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.

...its a rather pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.

Neither a person entirely broken nor one entirely whole can speak. In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.

We need to understand how destructive emotions affect us and constructive emotions can help us, so that we can maintain our peace of mind.

Tell me how you could say such a thing, she said, staring down at the ground beneath her feet. You're not telling me anything I don't know already. 'Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up.' What's the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back. I'd go to pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can't you see that? How can you talk about watching over me if you can't see that?

The cookie maker needs someone to look out for him.

Well, I don't need protection One life begins, another dies Bad timing I won't last

He couldn't figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up.

Anger is a fuel. You need fuel to launch a rocket. But if all you have is fuel without any complex internal mechanism directing it, you don't have a rocket. You have a bomb

Sometimes you build up these walls, you build and you build and you build up these walls and you think they’re so strong, but then someone can come along and tip them over with only his fingers, or the weight of his breath.

This is how your heart gets snagged, like a balloon on a barbed-wire fence, this is where pieces of you get torn away.

Sometimes you don't realize how dependent you are on just a few people, and if they disappear, suddenly you can be thrown on your own resources, which may be limited, and you're really in a fix. So I think that's authentic to the experience that it might be very lonely.

Loved ones. They are my backbone. They are the people that I turn to when I need the most support and the people who come to me when they are in need.

But in my heart I knew that just like the new grass, I wasn't strong enough yet to be walked on

Alone because love was one of those feelings that you could never have control of. And she needed to be in control. She had loved before, had been loved, had tasted what it was to dream, and had felt what it was to dance on air. She had also learned what it was to cruelly land back on the earth with a thud.

It's tougher to be vulnerable than to actually be tough.