Barbara Grizzuti Harrison Quotes

Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.

I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Falling in love, romance, matters of the heart - when you fall in love, on some biochemical level you know there is a chance it won't work out. It's ingrained in us that if you take such an enormous risk on someone with your heart that it might not pay off. I gamble all my chips and I might actually lose everything.

When your arms are out wide, you'll capture love and joy and golden moments but other things, too. Mistrust will sneak in on a wave of that joy, and complications will ride the backs of the golden moments, and there will be both love and the risks of love. That's the way it is. That's the design.

It's always a leap of faith when you get involved with somebody.

But risk is just part of relationships. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

...available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy.

You are safe with me." "I am not at all safe, with you. But I have no desire to be elsewhere.

A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It's a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer. Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there's a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith. The writer has to choose the right words to express his sentences, and then, once he has sealed the envelope, he has to place those thoughts in the hands of someone else, trusting that the feelings will be delivered, and that the recipient will understand the writer's intent. How childish to think that could be easy.

…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.

Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.

In this world, there was nothing scarier than trusting someone. But there was also nothing more rewarding.

(After Nicholas tells Dahlia that he loves her) "...Just don't break my heart my heart, Dahlia. I've never handed it over to anyone before." She placed both hands over his. "I've never had anyone's heart. I don't know the first thing about keeping hearts. You're taking a terrible risk." "That's what I do best." ... "Are you feeling relaxed now?" ... "I was until you started throwing around the L-word. That's enough to scare anyone.

I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let’s think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow—that’s vulnerability.

Love without risk is an impossibility, like war without death.

Since women ask me about male motives all the time, I can offer a bit of advice. If you feel like you're going to get hurt then you shouldn't be there in the first place. That's the way I look at relationships.

The maid that loves goes out to sea upon a shattered plank, and puts her trust in miracles for safety.

Marriage is a gamble, let's be honest.

I'm not going to fly a million miles with somebody I don't know.

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.

Love is very dangerous if you just have love and don't have the ability to be lovable.

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow - that's vulnerability.

Between lovers a little confession is a dangerous thing.

Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender - not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.