Quotes About Authenticity

I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled toward absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks. I was her truth object, and she was mine.

I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled toward absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world.

In a recent issue of Parade Magazine when asked for Advice for a Younger You, Glenn Close responded: I'd tell myself to listen to my heart. Listen to that little voice that says, 'Mmm, I don't think so.' Because when you override that, you basically override who you are.

She breathed deeply of the freedom she found in Mattie's presence. Here she had no choice but to be herself. The carefully erected decoys she was constantly shuffling and changing to fit the situation were of no use here. Etta and Mattie went way back, a singular term that claimed co-knowledge of all the important events in their lives and almost all of the unimportant ones. And by rights of this possession, it tolerated no secrets.

Lie to everyone in this man's world if need be, but never lie to yourself, because that's the quickest road to destruction.

so whatever you want to do, just do it...Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.

You're always the person you were when you were born, she says impatiently. You just keep finding new ways to express it.

Jonah peered critically up at the Renaissance masterpiece. Man, those copies don't due it justice. This one's the truth! Only a Janus, groaned Hamilton.

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

My dad always uses this expression: If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

I've never heard a teacher say something that was so completely, totally honest.

Although he wasn't trying to make a uniquely Christian point, I nevertheless find the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson quite provocative. "It is easy in the world," he wrote, "to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Children do not experience our intentions, no matter how heartfelt. They experience what we manifest in tone and behavior.

a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)

It is of no consequence what others think of you. What matters is what you think of them. That is how you live your life.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.

no similes. Nothing is like anything else. Things are themselves entirely and do not need interpretation, only a minimal respect for their precise integrity.

Nothing is like anything else. Things are themselves entirely and do not need interpretation, only a minimal respect for their precise integrity.

If I'm a bitch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a bitch and a fake?

For God's sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew.

The problem of pretending to be alive.

The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.

I don't believe anyone who says love, love, love. It means self, self, self.

Why [...] do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn't had time to disguise itself? Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, while on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you didn't love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed.