Guarded Quotes

“I made spasmodic efforts to work, assuring myself that once I began working I would forget her. The difficulty was in beginning. There was a feeling of weakness, a sort of powerlessness now, as though I were about to be ill but was never quite ill enough, as though I were about to come down with something I did not quite come down with. It seemed to me that for the first time in my life I had been in love, and had lost, because of the grudgingness of my heart, the possibility of having what, too late, I now thought I wanted. What was it that all my life I had so carefully guarded myself against? What was it that I had felt so threatened me? My suffering, which seemed to me to be a strict consequence of having guarded myself so long, appeared to me as a kind of punishment, and this moment, which I was now enduring, as something which had been delayed for half a lifetime. I was experincing, apparently, an obscure crisis of some kind. My world acquired a tendency to crumble as easily as a soda cracker. I found myself horribly susceptible to small animals, ribbons in the hair of little girls, songs played late at night over lonely radios. It became particularly dangerous for me to go near movies in which crippled girls were healed by the unselfish love of impoverished bellhops. I had become excessively tender to all the more obvious evidences of the frailness of existence; I was capable of dissolving at the least kind word, and self-pity, in inexhaustible doses, lay close to my outraged surface. I moved painfully, an ambulatory case, mysteriously injured.”
― Alfred Hayes, In Love

“Unknowingly, he prepared me to survive the rest of my days with the way he shielded himself from emotional vulnerabilities that slowly destroy the rest of us.”
― Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading

“The strong we like, but the vulnerable we love.”
― Nicholas M. Bugden, Blue Eyes Blazing

“She guarded herself like a secret.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson

“It is not aloofness, superiority. It’s a protection. Who in this ravaged battlefield doesn’t want to gather close her comrades?”
― Megan Abbott, Dare Me

“My fear tries to keep my secrets locked down, but my hope keeps slipping you the key.”
― David Levithan

“I'm learning to let go of my shields, to take the armors off (they are too heavy anyways) and march unguarded, if ever the need arises, towards the battlefield in defense of love.”
― Ayokunle Falomo, thread, this wordweaver must!

“He had no faith in love's capacity to cause him anything but pain.”
― Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This: Cat Person and Other Stories

“Simon, she'd learned, was a man who studied people. He learned their weaknesses as a way of protecting himself.”
― MacKenzie Taylor, The Way You Look Tonight

“You try to be selfish because you’re afraid of letting anyone too near. To guard themselves is the way of people whose instinct is to nurture and protect. - Kadar den Arnaud”
― Iris Johansen, Lion's Bride

“It makes me feel tired about how guarded we are the whole time. Without even trying we're ready to make a joke of everything, serving up the day with big dollops of irony and derision and cynicism. As if. Sucked in. Kidding.”
― Fiona Wood

“Claire continued. "There's a complexity of... looking forward to something. Being scared it doesn’t live up to your hope... like second dates... or returning to Cancun... or being in love with a stranger, hoping they never love you. It’s not that you prefer the concept or the excitement of the beginning. It’s the fear that a future with someone won’t be as nice as you hoped it would be. I would hate that, Brit. It'd crush me. It's like when you tell a person you like them—it always dips. It gets awkward. The expectation of it. I feel some things are best left at 'Hello.' Like, I write about living in a forest away from everyone, but I can’t tell if that’s the future I want or only enjoy writing about.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“The heart is the only muscle that gets stronger over time. And sadly, the only one we need not to.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Hope is as foreign to him as it is to me, and he's circling it. Poking it with a stick. Seeing if it's still breathing, and refusing to get excited until he knows it's the real deal.”
― Katharyn Blair, Unchosen: A YA Fantasy Standalone Where One Girl's Lie About the Chosen One Is All That Stops a Deadly Curse

“Cassian's warmth seeped into her side, his wings rustling near her back.

She let that warmth, the rustle anchor her.

He had come to save her from her nightmare, had stayed with her while she slept. Had guarded and fought for her. He would let no harm come to her now.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“You let your guard down and people fuck with you; you let your guard down and you get hurt. That's what I know. So what the hell am I supposed to do now?”
― Roan Parrish, In the Middle of Somewhere

“

I think we all wear armor. I think those who don't are fools, risking the pain of being wounded by the sharp edges of the world, over and over again. But if I've learned anything from those fools, it's that to be vulnerable is a strength most of us fear. It takes courage to let down your armor, to welcome people to see you as you are. Sometimes I feel the same as you: I can't risk having people behold me as I truly am. But there's also a small voice in the back of my mind, a voice that tells me, "You will miss so much by being so guarded."

Perhaps it begins with one person. Someone you trust. You remove a piece of armor for them; you let the light stream in, even if it makes you wince. Perhaps that is how you learn to be soft yet strong, even in fear and uncertainty. One person, one piece of steel.

”
― Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals