Frederick Buechner Quotes

I'd learned a lot in the Army. I knew that above all things in the world I had to become so big, so strong that people and their hatred could never touch me.

Sometimes, my weakness is where the strength really is, and it leads me to depend in the areas where I really should.

...Hard people are weak people whom nobody wants, and the strong, caring little whether they are wanted or not, have alone that meekness which the common herd mistake for weakness.

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.

We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.

I became good at defending myself, but as far as I was concerned, that was a transient skill.

Among the reasons people keep sad stories to themselves is that they do not want anyone to feel sorry for them. I don't. I don't want you to feel sorry for me.

I'm learning to deal with my loneliness because then nobody can muck me around any more.

The song 'Wolf Eyes,' I wrote because I felt like I was such a kitten. I want to be more of a wolf. I want to be stronger and more independent. I sort of wrote the song for that.

I don't let people affect me.

I conditioned myself many years ago that nobody could hurt me.

I think everybody should have the attitude that you can't allow yourself to be hurt. You avoid a lot just with that attitude.

Obviously, I'm not a man of steel in that people's words don't affect me. They might hurt me. But I am becoming immune to it as time goes by.

Vulnerability is the cornerstone of confidence.

To be strong is to understand weakness. To be weak is to have fears. To have fears is to have something precious to you. To have something precious to you is to be strong.

You awaken your True spirit by way of the broken heart: ragged, vulnerable, fierce and finally compassionate. Chris trod this rough way and shows honestly how it can be done.

Your only real choices are to open fully and receive their gifts or crucify them and be relieved of their force...But you must be willing to feel your heart's terrors and wounds or else you will close and protect yourself, striking back at the source of openness you most yearn to become.

In my personal life I wasn't someone who cried easily, someone who was extremely vulnerable, you know, in that way that's constantly seeking out affirmation from other people. I've always been much more the person who took care of everyone else.

A spirit cannot soar with only one wing.

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.

One's better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one's own. In fact it's a terrible business and the task is a hard one.

And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.

I just had to be strong enough to allow myself to be vulnerable. Great Lesson. For art and for life.

I've learned that every single trial offers us a chance to either turn away from what we know to be true, or to stand strong in who we are...

When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And as Chögyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.