Quotes About Authenticity

Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.

When you write, you are alone. It can be a bit of a shock later to discover that people have read what you've written!

I wanted to hear the songs in the way that I had written them, which was very basic. All I wanted was drums and another guitar, and I was just going to sing.

There was an open mic night when I was about 11 years old and I went and I played the songs that I'd written in my bedroom and it was the first night where I felt like I was myself at school.

My intention throughout has been to write, to create literature, and to be able to look people in the eye after I'd done it - the people I'd written about.

In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing. It makes sense. But I had always admired filmmakers who made movies that didn't sound like them at all.

I don't think I've done anything quite like 'Gypsy' before. Especially the honest way that it is written.

I've had offers to sign a record deal, but the people I've talked to have wanted to package me and have me meet with songwriters who've written stuff for Whitney Houston, that sort of thing. That's not at all my style.

A lot has been written about Tony Perkins and myself and I figured, Let's get it straight. I had a relationship with Tony for two to three years, but those are only threads in the tapestry of my whole life.

When I do period work, I really like to read about the period as much as I like to look at pictures because sometimes the written word is much better at conveying what their lives were really like and how much they had and where their clothes came from. Because, a lot of time, people dressed in their Sunday best to pose for a picture.

I'm confident in who I am, and I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just being myself: being comfortable with my body, comfortable with my sound, and I'm figuring out who I am.

Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.

I never professed to be perfect. I do something wrong or something stupid, I laugh at myself.

I may be crazy, but that don't make me wrong.

You're never going to please everyone, and if you do, there's something wrong.

There's something you do when you're completely confident that just can't be replicated when you know you're doing something wrong.

It's good to be happy and tell us how cool your life is and how awesome you are on social media. That's great because it inspires other people to be happy, too. But a lot of times, people are trying to be happy in the wrong ways - with money or with different things that are not true happiness.

I live my life like an open book, even though it's open on the wrong page.

You can't satisfy everybody. If you do, you're probably doing something wrong.

There's nothing wrong with being yourself.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, but clones kind of get it wrong because we are promoting individuality and being proud of being yourself.

Being honest to who I am led me to write 'If Our Love Is Wrong,' and that allowed me to fully realize the direction I should be heading to - human nature, real emotions, and issues about LGBT.

So people think I'm lying about my age all the time? It's the records that are wrong. I've never told anyone how old I am. The minute they ask me, I say 'That's none of your business.' So that means I've never once lied about my age. Now that's true!

I am not a perfectionist. Perfection doesn't exist in real life. It's a wrong title for me.