Quotes About Authenticity

I was not influenced by any artists.

I have never had anything to do with the kind of fashion that is influenced by the press or identified with the spirit of the season. My clients come for me; they come back each season for my spirit. That's the reality.

Madonna influenced me a lot. She's all about really being yourself and not giving a care in the world, and I really take after that.

A lot of people have an opinion. If you listen to them too much, your work will get influenced, and you make no one happy.

I am really influenced by normal, simple, everyday life and people, like the Biji and Dolly in 'Vicky Donor,' who used to drink and say whatever they felt like. These characters were so lively. I have seen these people around me.

I learned then that an actor must always be himself, and must not be influenced by the people with whom he works.

Don't copy another writer's style, because that is not authentic, and that's how it will sound. You develop your style over your whole life and through countless influences. Don't impose something artificial.

Don't be afraid to play what you feel and what you think no matter what it is. If you play long enough, you start to move past your influences and find your own music.

My father's music was influential. My place is my place. I must be myself and who I am.

The problem became this: We became a caricature of ourselves. We were after light, and it began to look as though we were after heat, not to reveal some information or not to find out the story.

True information does good.

I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history.

I'm not afraid to play my age. I never was. I've never been an ingenue. I like getting older.

Clinton's fakery was so deft and deeply ingrained that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the real Bill Clinton began. This constituted a kind of political genius.

The biggest ingredient in a best friend is someone whose actions you respect and who you can truly be yourself around.

As an artist, one of the ingredients to doing good work is self-awareness, and that's something I cultivate.

I certainly could've made a lot more money buying cheap ingredients, and people might not have been able to tell the difference. That was never a part of the calculus. It was not part of my DNA.

I cannot write about the past unless I go where history happened. Some make very good armchair historians, I'm not one of them. If you're going to inhabit someone else's world, the very least you can do is to spend a little time in it.

There is no Cura Gay, there's just gay. Or not. Or however you identify, and nobody should have say over something so personal and inherent.

Though there are lessons that can be learned about becoming a great leader, most exist inherently in the bellies of those who lead.

Directing is more comfortable for me because, as an actor, there's always something inherently false. Because I'm not that person.

As an actress I feel that if you start to impose your own inhibitions, then you are not doing your job.

I was just, as a child, very different from the others, and didn't really care what they thought because you know, a child doesn't really have inhibitions; you sort of gain your inhibitions later.

I feel, as an actor, one must not have inhibitions.