Quotes About Authenticity

Getting in touch with your true self must be your first priority.

When you're uncomfortable with the words you're using, it becomes obvious to your listeners. When they recognize your discomfort, their defenses are likely to go up making the continuation of the conversation or sales process more challenging than when you are comfortable with what you're saying. This is where dedication to your craft becomes very important.

That's not my picture...

As Brown writes: "When our self-worth isn't on the line, we are far more willing to be courageous and risk sharing our raw talents and gifts." One way to embrace creativity, Brown says, is to let go of comparison.

Man is not what he thinks he is; he is what he hides. —André Malraux

Het kleine tekent het grote, meer dan het grote op zichzelf, en dat kleine ligt ons prima. Als een Vlaming geniaal is? Dan is het altijd in de bijkomstigheden. Daar moogt ge u nooit voor schamen. Men moet zijn wat men is, op straffe van helemaal niets te zijn.

Soms is minder gewoonweg wat het is. Minder. En laat net mij gespogen en gescheten zijn, en onherstelbaar voorbestemd, en onherroepelijk verminkt, door een cultuur van 'Mag het iets meer zijn, madam'. En zelfs los daarvan, in alle eerlijkheid: 'minder' is een leugen. 'Minder' is een laffe constructie, gemakzuchtig bedrog, minimalistische kitsch.

"Be yourself" is about the worst advice you can give some people.

If people were to tell other people everything about themselves, we'd live in a dull world.

to be real--to become fluent, natural, to cut out the detour that sweeps us around what's fundamental to events, preventing us from touching their core: the detour that makes us all second-hand and second-rate.

But how many chose to ignore the direct attack they laid on what is fed to all of us as 'life,' with its well-defined roads to factory and pool-hall, to work and pleasure, both organized, both shells, both a continuation of existence by forced means, in the shadow of life?

No camera, no recording device, no laptop, none of this palm pilot nonsense or a cell phone. Paper and pencil, a book, maybe a bilingual dictionary. Anything beyond that (a) can be stolen, and (b) intimidates people you encounter. The more double-A batteries you carry, the more you distance yourself from the people you're writing about.

Maybe most people were fundamentally contradictory. The real people at any rate.

Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.

You've heard of people calling in sick. You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well? It'd go like this: You'd get the boss on the line and say, "Listen, I've been sick ever since I started working here, but today I'm well and I won't be in anymore." Call in well.

If man can't piss in his own front yard, then he's living too close to town!

Felt good, though, just being what I was.

The key to being a warrior is not to be afraid of who you are.

A person without her or his own truth ain't a person at all, Ida said. Anybody who tells you different—is a jackass, and no longer deserves to be called human being.

Identity is your role in life, the part you play. Individuality is who you are, and who you are is revealed to you if you can get to complete presence.

I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design.

You don't understand the things I do, but I do have my reasons. They're not your reasons, so they're not real to you, but they're real to me, and that's enough.

We all have wanted, at one time or another, to appear as an idealized self. "I'm actually a quite different person," as the playwright Ödön von Horváth wrote, "I just never get around to being him.

There's not much difference between what I appear to be on stage and what I am. I think people like that, that I'm not trying to pull a caper.