Quotes About Authenticity

In a way it was like washing your laundry in public and, yep, there you go, you've seen my underwear. And now I feel like there's nothing left, you've seen it all and I can get on.

I'm not the kind of person who is on television and in magazines every five minutes selling clothes or washing machines.

My appearance when I show up at the salon after washing my hair and going to bed the night before is my true self.

How did you stand lying about yourself for years? You must have felt cut off from the whole world." I fought down the lump in my throat. "I did indeed. And then I met this prince who seemed able to see through me, to the truth behind the lies. He was terrifying and fascinating, but to my amazement, it was an immeasurable relief to be seen.

For the merest moment I couldn't breathe. Something inside me quivered, some oud string plucked by his words, and if I breathed it would stop. He did not know the truth of me, yet he had perceived something true about me that no one else had ever noticed. And in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—he believed me good, believed me worth taking seriously, and his belief, for one vertiginous moment, made me want to be better than I was.

One cannot fly in two direction at once. I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.

That must be a wretched existence, forced to lie when you don't want to.

There is no pain in truth, no comfort in lies.

Sides, i don't like the posed pics.They're not the real person.They're a reflection of what the person wants the world to think of her-not what she really is.

I wasn't usually one to toot my own horn, which could also explain the no-boyfriend-status of my life. If bright plumage was the key, I was closer to being a brown wren.

I'd thought I'd be perceived as cool if I acted like I was up for anything. Instead I discovered that some things just aren't worth it.

I looked behind me to make sure my jeans hadn't caught on fire yet from all the lying.

People go through life trying to please some audience. But once you realize there's no audience, life is simple. It's just doing what you know in your gut is right.

She'd spent the decades barricading herself from life, setting the conditions for love so high no one else could ever meet them. Few, in fact, had made any effort. It was a simple thing, in the end, to hide in plain sight. The world did not prevent you from becoming what you were determined to become.

The greatest act of love—indeed, the only religion she could comprehend—was to speak the truth about the world. Love must be, then, an act of truth-telling, a baring of mind and spirit just as ardent as the baring of the body. Truth and passion were one, and each impossible without the other.

How do we know that our life really happened and that we are not simply accumulating details, making it all up as we go along?

We should torture language to tell the truth.

And there you were," he said. "In your cotton-underweared splendor.

Don't try to be someone you're not at the beginning of a relationship. Know who you are, accept and love yourself unconditionally -

I'm not just a Strong Black Woman; I'm a Real Human Being with strengths and vulnerabilities, hopes and fears, standards and contradictions.

I believe with all my heart that the cliches are true, that we are our own best friends and best company, and that if you're not right for yourself, it's impossible to be right for anyone.

The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them.

My mother never put an emphasis on looks. She let us grow up on our own time line. She never forced any beauty regimen into my world.

Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten. Integrity rarely means that we need to add something to ourselves: it is more an undoing than a doing, a freeing ourselves from beliefs we have about who we are and ways we have been persuaded to 'fix' ourselves to know who we genuinely are.