Quotes About Authenticity

I don't like the idea that you're supposed to woo someone by doing things you wouldn't want to do on an everyday basis.

I think, when I started writing songs, my voice just became another tool. It wasn't something that I was going to try desperately to woo a listener. As long as I'm using my voice in a way that helps people understand what I'm trying to say, then I feel like I'm doing all right.

I've been offered, I think it was £300,000 to play live two concerts in London some years ago. And I said 'No. No thanks.' I would rather stay home here and change oil on my car, or collect some rotten wood from the forest, spread on my ruined former agricultural land.

I don't like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn't important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious.

Every guitarist I would cross paths with would tell me that I should have a flashy guitar, whatever the latest fashion model was, and I used to say, 'Why? Mine works, doesn't it? It's a piece of wood and six strings, and it works.'

I love earth tones, jewel tones and everything that is natural. I also like natural materials like cottons, silks... I don't like synthetic. Even the wood we use has to be authentic.

I feel like everything you learn as an actor growing up is wrong. You're supposed to hit your mark, find your light and know your lines. Those are all things that just make things wooden, dull and boring.

When you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we're 'well-placed to weather the storm', I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line.

If you express yourself too much. you're overacting; if you underplay it too much, it can come across as wooden.

It's a fine line. If you withhold too much, you come across as wooden - as I've often been described in some movies. Fair enough. I believe that the best performances are the ones that an audience has to search for.

I've learned from being in the woods that titles don't mean much and that actions speak a lot louder than words - even in Congress. I always look for the people who want to act - people who want to run the river or climb the mountain - even if they're not members of my political party.

I might live in the woods, but I am a lazy actor.

My weekends are spent hidden in the woods, and then I have to come back and pretend to be this very upper-crust insurance investigator. But, I mean, duality's nice. You never get bored. You can't say the grass is always greener if you're in both backyards.

I'm going to live in the woods one day. Hunt, be weird, not have to listen to people call me a psycho all the time.

It's why real men just go out in the woods and howl. I must do it and get paid.

People who work in factories or in the woods or maybe a dairy farm - for years, I've been fascinated with people like that. No pretensions. They just live their lives. I found them beautiful. They were all I seemed to be interested in writing about.

We wanted to grow, and we were really over the circus theme at that point. We went out in the woods and got new clothes and all grew beards.

People can have so many ill-conceived ideas about me based on the parts that I play. I've had guys, when I've been single, come out of the woodwork to date me and I've found out very quickly that they were expecting some kind of whirlwind, some dramatic crazy person - and that's just not me.

Woody is so musical in his filmmaking. I've never worked with anyone I've trusted so completely. He won't let you hit a false note.

We don't need another Woody. Even Bob Dylan knew he couldn't be Woody Guthrie... I like Woody Guthrie fine, but I don't need the 50th generation version of it.

I'm a fan of Louis C.K., I'm a fan of Lena Dunham. I love shows about people that other people would consider unlikable, or, like, the work of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks.

I don't know if you know you're funny, but you enjoy being funny. I know I'm funny because people tell me I am, but when I watch myself, it doesn't make me laugh. Does that make sense? Because I know the jokes, and to me, I feel like I'm pulling the wool over people's eyes. And there are probably people who do not enjoy what I do.

Women often seem to have a fear of being 'found out'. Of thinking they've pulled the wool over their boss's eyes to get a job they don't deserve. I thought like that for years - but I'm massively over it now.

For all the criticism of me, there's one thing you won't hear anybody say, and that's that I've pulled the wool over anyone's eyes.