Quotes About Authenticity

It's a wonderful side effect of what we're doing, to give someone the strength to come out of the closet to their family, or simply present themselves aesthetically in a way they feel happy with, whether or not their friends are going to be allowed to like them anymore.

You cannot really unconditionally love others when when you need to prove your own self worth

A borrowed signature story can also come from news accounts, historical events, biographies, novels, fables, TV shows or movies. Whatever the source, the stories must communicate the strategic message in an intriguing, involving and authentic way.

I've never wanted anybody to like me because I had long hair or short hair, or that they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I smile.

You can fool everyone else, but you can't fool your own mind.

He had seen the ambitious and the proud seek to raise themselves above their kin, and in so doing corrupt themselves, make themselves into things of contempt. The true nobility did not need to prove itself. It simply was, a fact as indisputable as the orbit of planets and the majesty of stars.

I believe that if you speak from your heart each time you open your mouth, you cannot go wrong.

Excuse me, sir, I ain't no politician! I prefer to be honest and work for my livin'!

She pointed through the windshield at the intersection with First Street. "That is the intersection with First Street NE. I can pretend it's the intersection with Fifth Street as long as I like, but it won't change the fact. It is what it is.

The truth is, all I really want is someone who will care about me for who I am, rather than what I look like.

Natural history is not about producing fables.

A year earlier, I had described campaigns to reporters as "like an MRI for the soul—whoever you are, eventually people find out.

Just as a particular racism can only really be defined by the victims of that racism, the deep truth of identity is only available to those who live that identity. Casting a non-minority actor to mimic that identity feels, to the progressive eye, like impersonation, and impersonation carries with it an element of mockery: or at least, it is reductive, lessening the complexity of that experience by channeling it through an actor who hasn't lived it.*

In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.

The only work really worth doing — the only work you can do convincingly — is the work that focuses on the things you care about. To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life.

Most of us spend most of our time in other peoples' worlds — working at predetermined jobs, relaxing to pre-packaged entertainment — and no matter how benign this ready-made world may be, there will always be times when something is missing or doesn't quite ring true.

Only those who commit to following their own artistic path can look back and see this issue in clear perspective: the real question about acceptance is not whether your work will be viewed as art, but whether it will be viewed as your art. APPROVAL

We tell the stories we have to tell, stories of the things that draw us in-and why should any of us have more than a handful of those? The only work really worth doing-the only work you can do convincingly-is the work that focuses on the things you care about. To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life.

But while you may feel you're pretending that you're an artist, there's no way to pretend you're making art. Go ahead, try writing a story while pretending you're writing a story. Not possible.

The difference between a translation and an original is not of the same order as the difference between powdered and steamed coffee.

The life you think you should want ... is always the life that looks safest.

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.

Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

it is one of the great sandwiches of all time and has swept its way around the world after an American beginning. Nowadays the sandwich is bastardized because it is usually made as a three-decker, which is not authentic (whoever started that horror should be forced to eat three-deckers three times a day the rest of his life), and nowadays practically everyone uses turkey and their's a vast difference between turkey and chicken where sandwiches are concerned.