Quotes About Authenticity

Nothing is completely authentic. Even the guys who kill themselves are partially acting.

That, more than any person or event, informed the experience of nineties life: an adversarial relationship with the unseemliness of trying too hard.

The mere recognition of an extrinsic reality damages the intrinsic merits of one's own reality. In other words, it's a mistake to (consciously) do what everyone else is doing, just as it's a mistake to (consciously) do the opposite.

We secretly know that being seen as nice is the same as being nice in actuality. If you present yourself as a nice person, that becomes the prism for how your other actions are judged. The deeper motives that drive you can only be questioned by those who know you exceptionally well, and (most of the time) not even by them. If you act nice, you're nice.

The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no "normal," because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously. You can't compare your relationship with the playful couple who lives next door, because they're probably modeling themselves after Chandler Bing and Monica Geller. Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake.

There are three facts about Fugazi you must know: It only plays shows where age IDs are not required. It charges $5 admission to its shows, always. It will never, ever sign with a major record label.

Being interesting has been replaced with being identifiable

More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.

I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching.

your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.

Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine.

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!

Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them. This only looks like love.

Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history's in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand.

You can't fool people into loving you.

The most boring thing in the entire world is nudity. The second most boring thing is honesty.

For the record, knowing when people are only pretending to like you isn't such a great skill to have.

I'm not straight, and I'm not gay. I'm not bisexual. I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.

For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.

She's not wearing makeup so her face just looks like skin.

Mylife might be little and boring, but at least it's mine - not some assembly-line, secondhand, hand-me-down life.

What's burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock Tudor big manor house. It's a hundred generations removed from anything original, but the truth is aren't we all?

To stand here and try to fix her life is just a big waste of time. People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messed cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.

If it comes down to a choice between being unloved and being vulnerable and sensitive and emotional, then you can just keep your love.