Quotes About Authenticity

But it turns out that even if I don't talk a lot, when it's something that matters I still have a lot to say.

I hate it when people make fun of me and it turns out they're right.

And it occurred to me that the reason she makes it work, probably, is because she's so comfortable with herself. And you know, that's not such a bad notion, in the whole life-lesson business. Being comfortable with yourself. Because if you're not okay with who you are, why should anyone else be?

Oh. Listen, this is really hard for me . . . " "What is?" "You know. Being liked." I started to cry. I couldn't help it.

Being comfortable with yourself. Because if you're not okay with who you are, why should anyone else be?

The second revelation occurred when her unconscious released the idea, or the false belief, that her mother would love her only if she were totally perfect. Of course, that wasn't true. Her mother was incapable of loving her, and being perfect wouldn't alter that fact. That insight helped to free Madeline from trying so hard to please her mother.

One of the Indigenous healers I consulted in the first year of the case had said to me, "An Indian has to be an Indian, or he's hollow." Thirty years later, in 2018, the Indigenous American writer Tommy Orange wrote in his novel There There, "It's important that he dress like an Indian, dance like an Indian, even if it is an act, even if he feels like a fraud the whole time, because the only way to be Indian in this world is to look and act like an Indian.

Still, he never felt that the sermons he wrote at the cottage were good. By the time he got back to Washington to preach them, they no longer excited him. They seemed cold, lifeless. This was probably because Peter's best sermons rose out of the soil of emotion in his own heart. That emotion had to be a present, valid reality. He could not conjure it up.

Life is messy. I certainly don't expect tidiness from yours or anybody else's.

You are what you do. That's what I'm trying to tell you. What we do defines us. However we behave, conduct our lives...that's real. The rest is a story for publication.

I feel that the truth is simply the truth. And that to shield someone from it is only a manner of treating that person with a lack of respect.

All I know is that you can't force yourself to feel something you don't.

Accepting things. That's what the talk was about. About how insane it is to try to pretend something isn't a certain way, or that you can make it another way, just because you don't like it.

Not a one of us can be everything somebody else wants us to be. Trouble comes when we try to pretend we can. Or when people see it like a betrayal. You know. That somebody won't meet all their needs. My mom used to say it's because we weren't put here on earth to take care of each other. And that it's silly to get mad at someone for letting you down when they're just being who they are. She said it's like getting mad at your dog for not being a cat.

I have always felt," Nathan said, "that the truth is simply the truth. And perhaps does not exist for us to bend and revise. Or even filter to suit the feelings of those we love and want to protect.

Is that really love? When it happens so fast? She sighed. Paused the movie. Sighed again. Some would say it's only love after you've been together long enough to work out who takes out the trash. And there's something to that. That part of love where you have to work at it. Learn to live together. But when you set eyes on that person, it's something. Call it what you want. If it turns into love, then maybe it's just love in all its stages. It's still real

truth is simply the truth. And perhaps does not exist for us to bend and revise. Or even filter

the truth is simply the truth. And perhaps does not exist for us to bend and revise. Or even filter to suit the feelings of those we love and want to protect.

in a corral with the horses. They accepted me immediately. Unlike people, they don't judge much by your outsides. They knew I was one of them. Problem was, when one of the employees came around to ask what I was doing there, I was pretty caught up in being a horse, and I spooked. I felt my eyes widen, showing white all the way around,

We're all just running around being exactly what we are.

It's a choice between getting the crap beaten out of you for being exactly what you are, or avoiding the beating by selling out and pretending you're not, which is like pretending there's something wrong with what you are. I'm not sure which is worse.

took her hands away from her face. It was hard to do. She knew she looked a wreck. But if you can't trust a man to look at your real face and not run screaming, what good is it to have him around in the first place?

There is one thing in this life you can never hide, and that's love. When you're in love, you can't disguise that. No one I've known can conceal it, so far as I could tell. It's like that old saying about trying to hide your light under a bushel basket, except in this case all that happens is you get this very shiny basket that glows with a light people can see from miles away.

They reminded her what it meant to allow someone into your life. You see something you like in a man, so you ask him in, but what comes in is all of him. Not only the parts you took a liking to, but the many parts that don't fit with you at all. That's always the way it worked