Quotes About Authenticity

few writers like other writers' works. The only time they like them is when they are dead or if they have been for a long time. Writers only like to sniff their own turds. I am one of those. I don't even like to talk to writers, look at them or worse, listen to them. And the worst is to drink with them, they slobber all over themselves, really look piteous, look like they are searching for the wing of the mother. I'd rather think about death than about other writers. Far more pleasant.

Animals are inspirational. They don't know how to lie. They are natural forces.

Why do you haggle your beauty?" I asked. "Why don't you just live with it?" "Because people think it's all I have. Beauty is nothing, beauty won't stay. You don't know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you you know it's for something else.

I was a bore and didn't know when to smile or fake it. Or rather worse, I did but didn't.

Have you ever been in love? Love is for real people.

A cat is only itself.

Style means no shield at all. Style means no front at all. Style means ultimate naturalness. Style means one man alone with billions of men about.

beware of those that seek constant crowds. they are nothing alone.

There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. A writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets.

Have you ever been in love?" "Love is for real people." "You sound real." "I dislike real people." "You dislike them?" "I hate them.

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel goo, very good, when you are near or with them.

My revolution is a one-man revolution and almost everybody is the enemy. I may not be doing a great deal of damage, but at least I'm not bullshitting.

I think that people who keep notebooks and jot down their thoughts are jerk-offs. I am only doing this because somebody suggested I do it, so you see, I'm not even an original jerk-off. But this somehow makes it easier. I just let it roll. Like a hot turd down a hill.

You'll never be a writer if you hide from reality.

if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it.

They, all of them, seemed to put literary form in front of the actuality and living of life itself.

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

About church: the trouble with a mask is it never changes.

I went into the men's room and stared in the mirror at my face in disgust. I looked like I knew something, but it was a lie, I was a fake and there's nothing worse in the world than when a man suddenly realizes and admits to himself that he's a phoney, after spending all his time up to then trying to convince himself that he wasn't. I stared at all the sinks and pipes and bowls and I felt like them, worse than them: I'd rather be them.

Your life is your life

People lack originality.

A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around.

Love is for real men.

She's mad but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.