A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.

I never fall in love.

Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.

Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?

I’m an emotional person. Sometimes I can’t help it.

There’s different kinds of laughs. It’s like a baseball lineup: this guy’s your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we’re gonna win.

Through my research, I found that vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together. It’s the magic sauce.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

I’d always tried to resist playing the supervirility thing. I liked showing the vulnerability of age.

I’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook, and I’m saying everything in there out loud.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That’s an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can’t cheat real connection. It’s built up slowly. It’s about trust and time.

Of course I get hurt.

Actors know what actors are insecure about – and they’re all insecure.

The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn’t a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

I’ve laid my friends bare.

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

We judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing.

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

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

The moment someone asks you to do something you don’t have the time or inclination to do is fraught with vulnerability.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it’s not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It’s more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.

I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

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.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

Security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit; your machine can be taken over totally.

The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection. The outcome of oversharing is distrust, disconnection – and usually a little judgment.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life… I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

If you think dealing with issues like worthiness and authenticity and vulnerability are not worthwhile because there are more pressing issues, like the bottom line or attendance or standardized test scores, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It underpins everything.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

I tell people, and it’s the truth, I could sit in my garage for a week and it won’t make me a car. And you can sit in church till your bottom is flat and that won’t make you a servant of Christ.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

I am tough, but deep inside my toughness, I like to let people know I’m an old-fashioned mama’s boy.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn’t feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.

It’s so much easier to like people, and to let people in, to trust them until they prove that you should do otherwise. The alternative is being an iceberg.