Quotes About Authenticity

Stuart Stevens

Most people are distrustful of others who present themselves as one thing, then turn out to be another. I find it more useful to let them make their presumptions, then follow their preconceived notions.

The cold hard truth will fall on stony ground, whereas your all-around trashy rumor will flourish like a weed.

I can't stand a man who fawns, you know what I mean? I can't stand a man sucking up to me, but he was the kind who took you right on the floor and he didn't even look at you afterwards when he zipped up his pants.

Where does it say that being a couple is a measure of anything?

Emotion comes from a Latin word emovere, to move. We talk of being "moved" by our emotions, and we are "moved" when those we love show their deeper feelings to us. If partners were to reconnect, they indeed had to let their emotions move them into new ways of responding to each other. My clients had to learn to take risks, to show the softer sides of themselves, the sides they learned to hide in the Demon Dialogues.

Robert Putnam notes in his seminal book on the loss of social connection in Western societies, Bowling Alone, "Good socialization is a prerequisite for life online, not an effect of it: without a real world counterpart, Internet contact gets ranty, dishonest and weird." We

The truth is, we will never create a really strong, secure connection if we do not allow our lovers to know us fully or if our lovers are unwilling to know us.

People think they know what you're feeling. What you must be feeling. And because it's easier not to expose yourself, what you're truly feeling, you don't disabuse them. You go through the motions for them.

Sam felt more and more that there was no room for him to be who he really was with Claire.

It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.

I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.

There is no place so awake and alive as the edge of becoming. But more than that, birthing the kind of woman who can authentically say, 'My soul is my own,' and then embody it in her life, her spirituality, and her community is worth the risk and hardship.

I tried for so long to belong, to be as they needed me to be. Now I wish to be myself.

You've been halfway living your life for too long. May was saying that when it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid.

There was nothing I hated worse than clumps of whispering girls who got quiet when I passed. I started picking scabs off my body and, when I didn't have any, gnawing the flesh around my fingernails until I was a bleeding wreck. I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being me.

I have noticed that if you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away.

I felt like I'd unzipped my skin and momentarily stepped out of it, leaving a crazy person in charge

Whatever else you do, listen to your Deepest Self. Love Her and be true to Her, speak Her truth, always.

The truth may set you free, but first it will shatter the safe, sweet way you live.

I have one mind for the master to see. I have another mind for what I know is me.

I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. That's what I want—to hear you erupting. You Mount St. Helenses who don't know the power in you—I want to hear you. . . . If we don't tell our truth, who will? Ursula K. Le Guin

Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.