Quotes About Authenticity

I think there's a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer.

It is important to understand that in the modern world we prefer the replica to the original because it gives us the greater frisson. I leave that word in French because I think you understand it well that way.

Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?

Look, writers aren't perfect , I want to cry, any more than husbands and wives are perfect. The only unfailing rule is, If they seem so, they can't be.

I suppose the truth is that, yes, I'm not odd enough not to have done the things I've ended up doing with my life.

Naturalness onstage is just as much an artifice as naturalism in the novel

Io so una cosa per certo: che un tempo oggettivo esiste, ma che esiste anche quello soggettivo, quello che si porta sull'interno polso, proprio accanto alle pulsazioni cardiache. E questo tempo personale, che è poi anche quello autentico, si misura in funzione del nostro rapporto con i ricordi.

Though always frank, the novelist was never wholly sincere.

They didn't want you to fake adherence to their banal taste and meaningless critical slogans – they wanted you actually to believe in them.

De haber vivido, ¿habría disfrutado de la vida, como la mayoría hacemos o intentamos hacer? Quizá; o tal vez habría albergado culpa y remordimiento por no haber sabido acoplar sus actos con sus argumentos.

No intento tejer una historia; estoy tratando de contar la verdad.

I don't want you to be a woman of mystery. I think I'd hate it. Either it's just a façade, a game, a technique for ensnaring men, or else the woman of mystery is a mystery even to herself, and that's the worst of all.

nowadays, in the digital landscape, friends and followers have come to mean different, watered-down things. Many people know one another without knowing them at all. And are happy with that superficiality.

The truth is not kind.

Their pretensions are naked and vulnerable and for that reason, to me at least, rather charming.

People never outgrow wanting to be liked for being who they truly are, especially when they've grown up in the limelight or its shadowy edge.

Not everyone believes that I'm a fairy princess, but the sparkle I feel inside tells me that it's true.

Before him and since he'd gone away, she'd either contracted or ever-so-subtly contorted her very being to accommodate nearly everybody else. She was only ever wholly herself with him.

Charm is an essence, not a façade.

Be kind to the spider. It's simply working hard to be itself. And don't tell the maids

She charmed and sparkled and said witty things, but she knew very well she was being charming and sparkling and witty while she was doing it, which somehow felt wrong.

Being attractive should have nothing to do with being accepted. It is what is inside a person that matters

If you're afraid to let someone else see your weakness, take heart: Nobody's perfect. Besides, your attempts to hide your flaws don't work as well as you think they do.

Up there I'm just passing as me.