Quotes About Authenticity

It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date. It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit. It just has to be.

My ambition is to not embarrass myself--which, if you know me, is a pretty serious ambition.

Stay true to yourself. Let your voice ring out, and don't let anybody fiddle with it. Never turn down a good idea, but never take a bad idea. And meditate.

I don't know how I got to that thing of not caring what other people think, but it's a good thing. The thing is, you fall in love with ideas and it's like falling in love with a girl. It could be a girl you wouldn't want to take home to your parents, but you don't care what anybody else thinks. You're in love and it's beautiful and you stay true to those things.

Stay true to yourself. Let your voice ring out, and don't let anybody fiddle with it.

One man who estimated that he had hooked up with thirty or forty women over the past year through dating apps admitted, "I sort of play that I could be a boyfriend kind of guy," in order to win them over, "but then they start wanting me to care more . . . and I just don't.

I have long since stopped caring what others think, he said. --- Of me or of anything else.

the Great Actor, capable of bringing herself to tears, may extort our admiration for her "accomplishment," but she will never leave us stronger; she has made us pay a price, and made us pretend we like it, but we leave the theatre moved only by our capacity to be moved.

perhaps because much further back I had had to face certain difficulties until I decided to accept the fact that a man must be what he is, life must be lived as it is… and you cannot live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be."128

For now, if you are a white writer writing about a character of color, here is one consideration: Do you have friends or colleagues of that race who would openly and freely tell you if you are failing in that task and how and why, and would you be willing to seriously consider their critiques?

No secrets, no longing, no desperate hoping Just reach out and grab from a world cracked open.

But thanks to my rapidly dividing cells, I no longer have that feeling—although I remember it very well—that if I just buckled down to the great work at hand, lived more authentically, stopped procrastinating, cut out sugar, then my best self was just there right around the corner. Yeah, no. I'm done with all that. I

What remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss over them with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories. Procedural and depopulated. It's as if a neutron bomb went off and all you're left with are hospital corridors, where you're scanning the walls for familiar photographs.

Talent is part of the equation, but when you combine talent with accountability and authenticity, it is tough to beat.

The truth is liberating—but only when you have the courage to live it.

A solid sense of self develops from confronting yourself, challenging yourself to do what's right, and earning your own self-respect.

I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece but Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!

As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.

It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters.

The only bright spot in the entire evening was the presence of Kevin Tubby Matchwell, the eleven-year-old porker who tackled the role of Santa with a beguiling authenticity. The false beard tended to muffle his speech, but they could hear his chafing thighs all the way to the North Pole.

Real trouble doesn't walk around with a ponytail. It doesn't have a Mohawk or special shoelace patterns. Real trouble has a bad complexion and a Windbreaker.

Like most seasoned phonies, I roundly suspect that everyone is as disingenuous as I am.

It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it. I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not "Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece" but "Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!

In my book, if you want to be treated like an old person, you have to look like one. That means no face-lift, no blond hair, and definitely no fishnet stockings.