Quotes About Authenticity

My task was to ensure that the people scuttling in the background of the film would be real Vietnamese things and dressed in real Vietnamese clothing, right before they died.

I cannot be the only one who believes that if others just saw who I really was, then I would be understood and, perhaps, loved. But what would happen if one took off the mask and the other saw one not with love but with horror, disgust, anger? What if the self that one exposes is as unpleasing to others as the mask, or even worse?

I cannot be the only one who believes that if others just saw who I really was, then I would be understood and, perhaps, loved.

And authenticity's important. Not that authenticity beats imagination. The story still comes first. The universality of the story has to be there. But it doesn't hurt to get the details right.

I liked my scotch undiluted, like I liked my truth. Unfortunately, undiluted truth was as affordable as eighteen-year-old single malt scotch.

White people love you, don't they? They only like me. They think I'm a dainty little china doll with bound feet, a geisha who's ready to please. But I don't talk enough for them to love me, or at least I don't talk the right way. I can't put on the whole sukiyaki-and-sayonara show they love, the chopsticks in the hair kind of mumbo jumbo, all that Suzie Wong bullshit, like every white man who comes along is William Holden or Marlon Brando, even if he looks like Mickey Rooney.

Cut to villagers speaking in their own language? Do you think it might not be decent to let them actually say something instead of simply acknowledging that there is some kind of sound coming from their mouths? Could you not even just have them speak a heavily accented English—you know what I mean, ching-chong English—just to pretend they are speaking in an Asian language that somehow American audiences can strangely understand?

It was a little past nine o'clock when I checked my watch at the entrance to his apartment building, a gray two-story factory for manufacturing hundreds of tired replicas of the American Dream. All the inmates imagined their dreams to be unique, but they were merely tin reproductions of a lost original.

And I realized again that real life is different from reel life.

Beware of laugh at and laugh with; the only people who laugh at you are the ones who pretend to laugh with you.

Beware of those who don't like bread and children.

Don't be led by the exterior. Give more attention to what lies beneath the skin.

Just because you are living and breathing doesn't mean you are alive.

Just because you find a thought somewhere with somebody's name written after it doesn't mean they really said it.

Just because you say you are great doesn't mean you are.

Life is the trump card of love and love is the wild card of reality.

No questions, boy, then you won't get no lies.

Nobody loves the way he ought to, he loves the way he has to or is allowed to.

Teach your tongue to say "I don't know" instead of making up something.

The man who uses big words is afraid that if people knew what he was talking about, they would know he didn't know what he was talking about.

The word of a man is a man, so make your words worthwhile.

Those who know how to praise also know how to lie.

You are all you have to offer the world. Know yourself, love yourself and be yourself.

You will find many to like you if you keep making a fool of yourself.