Quotes About Authenticity

It has been a motto of mine my whole life - just be yourself.

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds. It is something one creates.

If you want to write, start writing now in your own home town and write every day as hard as you can; do not think you have to go to Paris and wait for inspiration to strike.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous.

No quiero sentir ya mi vida como si fuera una estadía. La filosofía que así la pinta es falsa. Ya es hora de empezar a vivir.

It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.

We all look with distaste on people who arrogantly pretend to a reputation to which they are not entitled; but equally to be condemned are those who, through lack of moral fibre, fail to live up to the reputation which is theirs already.

See that? Paul said. Ten goddamn seconds. I don't get it. You didn't even have to hear the whole song, just a few lines, and you got the chills and that swirly, happy-sad feeling in your gut, didn't you? ... That's the difference between the real stuff and the crap. I know which one you are and you know which one I am.

Be critical. Women have the right to say: This is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades.

he smelled like somebody trying to smell like somebody else.

But deep prayer, prolonged prayer, is a terrible mirror—kneel there long enough and everything shows. There's no way out of eventually seeing your phoniness and dishonesty.

I will always be there in the wings saying, 'You need to be good to people. You need to take your work seriously. You need to have integrity. You need to work with what you've got.

Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly." —Epictetus

You have no control over other people's taste, so focus on staying true to your own.

Van Meegeren admitted painting not only the work that had been found in Nazi hands, but Christ at Emmaus and several other supposed Vermeers.

Some of your children's rebellion against your spiritual lifestyle might be a necessary step in their finding an authentic relationship with God. But beware: If they find it, it might look quite different from what you've always thought it should be.

Story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.

If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth.

Kiowa who saw it happen said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something-Just Boom-then down. Not like in the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle-not like that. Kiowa said. The bastard just flat fuck fell. Boom down. Nothing else.

when you're dead, you just have to be yourself.

True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis. For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can't believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside. It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.

Trust your own story. Get the hell out of the way and let it tell itself

Whenever he told the story, Rat had a tendency to stop now and then, interrupting the flow, inserting little clarifications or bits of analysis and personal opinion. It was a bad habit, Mitchell Sanders said, because all that matter is the raw material, the stuff itself, and you can't clutter it up with your own half-baked commentary. That just breaks the spell. It destroys the magic. What you have to do, Sanders said, is trust your own story. Get the hell out of the way and let it tell itself.

He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.