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

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

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.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

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

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.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

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.

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

If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don’t get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten squeezed. And obviously, 2007, 2008 really ripped open for people how vulnerable they were.

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.

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.

Every time I hear a politician mention the word ‚stimulus,‘ my mind flashes back to high school biology class, when I touched battery wires to a dead frog to make it twitch.

Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you’ve got all the answers, then don’t call what you do ‚faith.‘

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

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.

I’m not afraid to look like an idiot.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

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.

Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.

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

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

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

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

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.

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

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.

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.

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

I never fall in love.

Because I believe in God and have faith in God, it doesn’t mean I am immortal. It doesn’t mean I am immune, as has been claimed. I am as scared as anyone of getting hurt, especially driving a Formula One car.

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

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.

Men walk this tightrope where any sign of weakness illicits shame, and so they’re afraid to make themselves vulnerable for fear of looking weak.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

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

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.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

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 fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

Life’s a rollercoaster. You’re up one minute; you’re down one minute. But who doesn’t like rollercoasters?

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

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

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that’s such a downer, and people hate that topic. It’s not that vulnerability is the upside, but it’s better than shame, I guess.

A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.

An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

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.

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

As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don’t always feel like I’m a success. That’s right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I’ve just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I’m trying to communicate with.

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