Quotes About Authenticity

I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

Me, I'm just a hack. I'm just a schlep-per. I just do what I can do.

All I would tell people is to hold on to what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You've got to find in on your own terms.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

There is a difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him.

Imitation can acquire pretty much everything but the power which created the thing imitated.

Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!

I think somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do.

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

I am the only real truth I know.

My unreality is chiefly this: I have never felt much like a human being. It's a splendid feeling.

You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost.

I am what I am, so take me as I am!

I is who I is.

People remain what they are, even when their faces fall to pieces.

Contentment, and indeed usefulness, comes as the infallible result of great acceptances, great humilities-of not trying to conform to some dramatized version of ourselves.

Resolve to be thyself ... he who finds himself loses his misery!

There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely.

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people's models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.

All the discontented people I know are trying to be something they are not, to do something they cannot do.

Be yourself. The world worships the original.

It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.

Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.