Quotes About Authenticity

Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false... In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.

That's what I think makes the best anything, is that if something is written to fit a person like a glove, because then everything feels so true.

Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.

I can say that on the record 'Transit of Venus,' there's maybe one or two songs that actually do come from my heart, but a lot of songs have been written just for radio and for fans, you know, to relate to.

I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is.

I don't like lyrics that are just thrown together, that were obviously written as you went along, or the song was already written and the guy made up the lyrics in five minutes.

I always work only with friends, but it must be about them and myself. Because I film only very personal moments, nothing preplanned, staged or written, it has to be real and spontaneous. Some of them have become famous, some are not yet famous, some will never be famous. But they are all my friends.

I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.'

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset - tears are words waiting to be written.

I hated writing 'Love Warrior.' It's the hardest thing I've every written. I cried.

I didn't want to be written about as a human-interest story. I didn't want to be a passing thing. You know, now we move on to the fat girl who had her stomach stapled. I didn't want to become a gimmick: the disabled model.

The press has always written that I am a recluse and a mysterious woman, but I am more down-to-earth than they think.

A lot of stuff written about me is rubbish. I don't know where they get it from, sometimes.

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.

I have a repertoire of songs that I'm proud of, that I've written for my own band. When I do a cover, something that somebody else has written, I think about it very carefully before I sing that song. I have to really get behind it and understand it and like it. And that's how I pick roles. I don't want to play just anything.

My life is very simple, it is not worth being written into a biography, for that 'masala' is required.

First and foremost, telling historical stories is very tricky because it is something that is known. It is not like you can tell a lie or change something that is written in black and white.

'No Matter What' is, without question, the most personal song I have ever written and the one I am most proud of.

I never freestyle. I always give a written verse cause I just don't wanna go out like that.

When I'm writing, it's because I'm trying to figure something out for myself. If I don't believe in what I've written, then how can I expect anyone else to believe in that, either?

It's pretty rare that something I've written is close to something that's pre-existed.

What's interesting is to be sexy but not know it. You'll be in a restaurant, and some girls will walk in and you can tell that they really want to be sexy. It's written on their faces because that's all they want to show. There's a fear that one might not look further.

When people embrace character, there's latzie. It's the stuffing of a scene that's not written. It's not in the stage direction and it's not in the words. When people embrace character, it informs their living, breathing moments in a scene so well.

I'm a talk-show junkie. I'd rather listen to real folks stumbling to express their own thoughts than to polished puppets reading what others have written.