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Quote by Barbara O'Neal

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The Art of Inheriting Secrets

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Barbara O'Neal

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“A glowing green traced the movements of our limbs below the gentle surf. I imagined a scaly, bug-eyed eel with razor-sharp teeth had come from the deep to hunt for a late-night meal before realizing it was a luminescent algae emitting a subtle glow with each tread of the water. At one point, we returned to the beach to rest and came across a nest of hatching turtles making their first voyage into the water. We watched the sun gradually peek over the horizon, and I realized in this moment that I had your mother's deepest trust. Miles away from her comfort zone, she was willing to walk with me and explore the depth of a world I had grown to love. I, in turn, would need to trust her to the utmost as I stepped deeper into her world of stand-up comedy.”

“When a person lies to you once all you can think is what else. What else are they hiding? What other untruths have been said? To your face, to someone else; behind your back. And how. How do you begin to clean out this room in your heart? Unearth the love? Wash the walls clean white? Undo their stench from your blood. Their stench from your skin. And how. How do you begin to detach from them. And the you in them. And the I in us.”

“We're cautious. How many people do you know whose crying out is for intimacy? They want to be known. They want to be touched. But they can't make that intimate connection without being vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable in order to achieve this exchange of intimacy. And you can't be vulnerable unless you can trust the situation. And what we're learning, many of us, is the world is not trustworthy enough for you to be vulnerable to it and gain that intimacy.”

“I know the solution isn't to allow myself to trust everyone in the hope that my trust will be rewarded, just as the approach of treating all situations and people with caution isn't an effective one. There is no right answer. All I can do is listen to my gut, trust in my instincts, rely on my fear, wear comfortable shows and believe in women when they tell me what they know or have seen. That's all the hope we can have.”

“We give our all to our relationships. We give our love, pain, joy, fear, and hope. We give our body, mind, and spirit. We trust the other person with all that we are. Fighting is a small price to pay for the opportunity to give something as beautiful as a person’s whole being. The really beneficial relationships are the ones where we are deeply connected to the other. Sometimes, they tear us apart and then reform us. They can be painful and scary ventures. One has to have courage. One day, there will be nothing left to fight about.”