Quotes About Authenticity

If all I ever wrote about was inner city freaks, I think it would be dishonest.

'The First Time' is a song that I wrote by myself on my front porch, in real-time, as that situation was happening to me.

I used the dictionary very minimally and I just wrote how I speak. And I speak very hateful manner usually. I constantly did that because I think the fans would get more out of it if they understood exactly what I'm saying - exactly where I'm coming from.

To have a songwriter that wrote so specifically what I felt to be true... I've never been much of an actor either. If something is real for me, then I can do it.

Even though other people wrote my songs I put my stamp on them. I have a connection, but there is no truer connection than an artists and their own song.

It doesn't really feel like it's got anything to do with me. I mean, I know I wrote it, and all that and invented the characters and made it up, but it's Mike's film, so doing the press and stuff, it feels a little bit inauthentic. I was just one component of it.

Politicians have always been required to be fake, but now the career havoc wrought by a stray, flying sound bite means they have to sustain their fakeness all the time.

As for regret, more than anything else, my regret lies in that the WWE Universe never really got the real Austin Aries. Outside of commentary, they missed out on the chance to hear and see me be me, and do what I do best.

I can tell you this, and I'm 100 percent sure: 90 percent of the people working for WWE have never been in a real fight in their lives.

I get bullied for my size, my weight, and my look constantly. It's something that I'm glad we touched on in WWE. I'm glad we touched on it because it's real: it's something that happens in real life to kids all the time, especially in the age of cyber bullying.

Had the WWE fights were artificial and pre-scripted, there would have been no need for wrestlers like The Great Khali and The Undertaker. You cannot fool thousands of people crammed into a stadium and sitting four to five feet away from you in the ring.

Do not try doing the things that we do one TV in WWE. We're the entertainers, we're the professionals.

I can literally count on one and a half hands how many people in WWE treated me the same pre-Mark and post-Mark. Michelle McCool didn't change, I'm still me. There were a ton of people that found out I was dating Mark and was like, 'Oh, I better change my tune and be super nice.'

Being a WWE performer and doing all the different things we get to do, it can wear on you, and you can learn a lot of stuff about yourself. For me, it always reminds me to just stay humble. Just be yourself, love what you do, and enjoy the ride.

My biggest concern with the whole deal with 'Total Divas' and with WWE - and, you know, they want you to be engaged with social media and all this kind of stuff - I don't want to live my life to entertain other people.

I might be the only guy in WWE who isn't acting ever.

WWE didn't want RVD to get over when I was there. They tried so much to... to... not get me... to... to... keep me from that. They didn't understand why the fans liked me, because I don't fit the cookie cutter formula, because I am a non-conformist.

If I wanted to do a fixed fight, I'd be doing WWE.

That generic outlook of what a 'WWE champion' should be is a joke to me. The casual fan walks in and expects to see a guy in short trunks with abs and a shaven body. I do not believe in that.

I spent the whole time I've been in WWE trying to build this character who is unbreakable, who is not vulnerable, and who is not relatable. For me to let down my guard and let people in, I had to make that decision, and once I did, I had to own it.

The heart of the sport is about the top guys fighting each other. This isn't WWE; this is fighting.

As a writer for six years, I wrote my own TV, which, I was the only person in the WWE that could probably honestly say, since day one in NXT, they wrote their own material.

I'm not a 'Yes Man,' and I've always preferred to go back and forth and find something we both agree on so I can do it to the best of my ability. That was taken in WWE as trying to do what was best for me. In reality, I was trying to be different.

I do think people see us on WWE so often as just characters. They forget we have real lives and we go through similar situations as the average person.