Lisa Kleypas Quotes

Nobody's just arrogant. I've met people who are embattled and dismissive, but when you get to know them, you find that they're vulnerable - that that hauteur or standoffishiness is because they're pedaling furiously underneath.

I don't think anyone can walk through the world in a state of vulnerability all the time, can they?

I would like to be soft and warm. I would be terrified to be that way. I could be hurt if I were soft and warm. I could be hurt by something other than myself. It is harder to be soft than it is to be hard. I could be hurt by something other than myself.

I don't know anybody who is raising their hand saying, "Oh God, I love being vulnerable and needy."

I'm sarcastic, skeptical, and sometimes callous because I'm still afraid, deep down, of letting myself be hurt.

We learn to make a shell for ourselves when we are young and then spend the rest of our lives hoping for someone to reach inside and touch us. Just touch us—anything more than that would be too much for us to bear.

I'm a woman who carries around all these layers of fear and vulnerability.

It's a terrible thing to be alone - yes it is - it is - but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath - as terrible as you like - but a mask.

I have lived so long among people who do not understand me, been so long accustomed to refrain and disguise myself for fear of being laughed at, that I have grown as difficult to come at as a snail in a shell; and what is worse, I cannot come out of my shell when I wish it.

I don't hide out. If you build a wall around yourself, it draws people to invade it. Fear is the enemy.

I'd always been fascinated by people who allow themselves to be so rude and irritated and foul-mouthed and hostile, but usually you can sense there's something vulnerable beneath them - a shield they use to protect that vulnerable side. Finally, when they expose that soft spot, it's kind of touching.

After I lost my fiance, it seemed like it would be better to always be alone than to risk being hurt again.

When you're an insecure teenager, you build walls and defenses and masks, and those are incredibly satisfying to perform and chip away at. I mean, when I was an insecure teenager, you'd have had no idea what I was insecure about because I hid it so well. Only confident people are comfortable wearing their vulnerabilities on their sleeve.

If you are a card-carrying human being, chances are that you share the same fear as all other humans: the fear of losing love, respect and connection to others. And if you are human, in order to avoid or prevent the pain, trauma and perceived devastation of the loss, you will do anything to avoid your greatest fear from being visited on you.

I couldn't really trust anyone. Not completely.

I'm a sponge. I sometimes don't want to go out of my house because it's like, 'Who's going to make me cry today?'

I find myself bitter, defensive, and more misanthropic than I care to admit.

It used to hurt me when people said I was hiding in Wales.

I think I was a pretty anxious dreamer, maybe a fundamentally lonely kid.

On my travels I, at least, did not see Serbia as a land of paranoiacs - much more as the huge room of an orphaned, yes, an orphaned, abandoned child.

I feel pretty vulnerable all the time.

Let’s talk, you and I. Let’s talk about fear. The house is empty as I write this; a cold February rain is falling outside. It’s night. Sometimes when the wind blows the way it’s blowing now, we lose the power. But for now it’s on, and so let’s talk very honestly about fear. Let’s talk very rationally about moving to the rim of madnessand... and perhaps over the edge.

They can't hurt me. I'm not like the rest of you. There's no one left I love.

I'm not afraid of new things. I'm just afraid of feeling alone even when there's somebody else there. I'm afraid of feeling bad. Maybe that's selfish, but it's the way I feel.

I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.