Quotes About Authenticity

By being yourself on the page, you'll more than likely attract more readers because of your individuality than you would by hiding your personality behind a neutral style.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. Ralph Waldo Emerson

She said that in writing anything, you must be perfectly honest.

The glow of delicioous tension coudn't be faked, not at any price. So when you leave, that's when you realise you've been living in a lie.

mouths met in a slow, warm kiss that demanded nothing yet promised the world. The kind only two people who'd shared incredible intimacies, and knew how good things could be, were able to fully savor. She tasted so sweet, and felt so right in his arms, that he couldn't even remember why he'd bargained for anything but the real deal

nuts. I told you before, I'm no nice guy." He had an ex and a bunch of other people, like those he'd busted and some he'd worked with, who'd confirm it. She turned around in his arms, her body pressed against his as she looked up into his eyes. "Yes, you are. That's what's killing me here." "I so don't get

That's when I began passing as a man. Strange to be exiled from your own sex to borders that will never be home.

It's a beauty one isn't born with, but must fight to construct at great sacrifice.

I wanted to thank you. If it wasn't for you, I'd never have known I had a right to be me.

I put on lipstick and high heels and walk down the street arm in arm with you, Jess. This is my life, and I'm damn brave to love who I love. Don't try to take who I am away from me." My chin trembled, "Well, what do you think's being taken away from me? What the fuck am I going to do, Theresa? Tell me, what can I do? ...I don't want to die and I don't know how to live. I'm really afraid.

I didn't regret the decision to take hormones. I wouldn't have survived much longer without passing. And the surgery was a gift to myself, a coming home to my body. But I wanted more than to just barely exist, a stranger always trying not to get involved. I wanted to find out who I was, to define myself. Whoever I was, I wanted to deal with it, I wanted to live it again. I wanted to be able to explain my life, how the world looked from behind my eyes.

When you do something out of conviction, my dear, it should be because you believe it's the right thing to do. If you look for approval from everyone, you'll never be able to act.

very quickly I discovered that passing didn't just mean slipping below the surface, it meant being buried alive. I was still me on the inside, trapped in there with all my wounds and fears. But I was no longer me on the outside.

My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.

Don't expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood.

Sapped of strength, I discover a self that doesn't rely on strength.

Truth has nutritional value.

No one cares about the art of the lie at this point. They insist on impressing with the truth. See me! Look at me! Look at who I am! Look at who I want you to think I am!

That's the problem with revealing true truths. They make people uncomfortable. The truth should be grand and exotic, but mostly it isn't. Mostly it's uncomfortable.

Rather than being guided by images of how to be, people need to attend to how they actually are and to respect this.

God calls us to be biblical peacemakers, not peacekeepers or peace fakers.

Many of us, like Sandra, are under the impression "that if we don't feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different, namely, that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting."5 Choosing to act right when you don't feel like it isn't hypocrisy; it's obedience.

It can be extremely difficult to discern evil hearts because their intention is to look good, not be good.

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme ... If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.