Quotes About Authenticity

It's not a very popular subject amongst my audience, who are by nature more internationalist, but I don't choose what to write about, I don't choose my subjects, they kind of choose me.

The thing about documentary is that you don't really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.

I want to make serious work that engages with serious subjects. I'm very lucky: I get to more or less make what I want.

I think that if journalists, reporters who spend a lot of time on a story, are honest with themselves, we all have feelings about our subjects - I mean, unless you're a robot.

To nurture the sort of relationships that will truly help propel you towards accomplishing great things, you need to forget transactional networking and focus on having in-depth conversations with fewer people about subjects you really care about.

People treat serious subjects so seriously, which is so obvious a way of dealing with them. I'm always thinking that the best way of dealing with them is to show people as human beings.

I will always face the conundrum that the subjects I'm attracted to aren't essentially commercial.

For so many years, I was trying to beat my hair into submission, trying to get it to look like someone else's hair, and I didn't know how. I remember going through a phase where I even put beer in my hair, because I was told that would make it smooth and curly.

At which point should we let go and do what we want to do, and when should we submit to rules? Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

I mostly don't submit to talking about my work because I would like another talk about real life.

God is not asking you to be anything other than what he's made you, as long as you submit to how he has made you, to how you relate to other people who he has made different than you.

I don't subscribe to anything. I sit there and I try to think about what seems honest to me.

I am a person who does not subscribe to the hero-CEO school of thought.

All black women aren't sassy, loud, difficult, or subservient. We are, in fact, very complex and very diverse, living very complex and diverse lives. That point cannot be made enough.

It's hard to prove yourself when the substance isn't there in certain roles.

I'll never put out some super-dumbed-down music. It'll always have some substance to it.

A lot of times, you'll be flipping through country radio and there's just no substance. Like I've said before, it's all about props: Solo cups or whatever. It's not about a dude's work day or someone that lost a good friend or relative. There's nothing to hold onto when you're going through something.

Sometimes I watch myself on 'The Hills' and I'm like, 'Whitney, could you, like, maybe pretend to be more interested, or say something of some substance instead of just giving looks?'

I won't take parts where the female character has no substance.

I knew that this was what I wanted to talk about on stage. There was no point being coy about it, or pretending that I wasn't gay. That was the substance of my whole act. If you took that away, there would be nothing left.

I'd hate it to become style over substance, I'd hate people to start putting me in a magazine article about my style. I don't like dressing up in something I'm not necessarily comfortable in just to make it more of a show. I want the power to come from what I sing about and how I sing.

Don't let form become more important than the substance of your heart and mind. Don't let commerce determine what you do exclusively.

I'm not about sound bites. I'm about substance.

No one can deny who you are unless you are, in some way, minimizing the power and the force of your divine substance.