Quotes About Authenticity

The stresses I had obsessed about seemed like cleverly constructed challenges that beckoned me to create life more mindfully and authentically.

I have started the process of releasing the feeling of "being wrong" because they are not fitting someone else's standards.

Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience.

Where other women ... were lovely, Annie Gamache was alive. Late, too late, Jean Guy Beauvoir had come to appreciate how very important it was, how very attractive it was, how very rare it was, to be fully alive.

Beauvoir left their home wanting to call his wife and tell her how much he loved her, and then tell her what he believed in, and his fears and hopes and disappointments. To talk about something real and meaningful. He dialed his cell phone and got her. But the words got caught somewhere south of his throat. Instead he told her the weather had cleared, and she told him about the movie she'd rented. Then they both hung up.

Just because it's the truth doesn't make it less insulting.

it's not the truth about others that will set you free, but the truth about yourself.

Funny how imperfections on the outside mean something splendid beneath.

Character is not created in times like these. It's revealed.

But privately Reine-Marie wondered. Wondered whether what people did in a crisis was, in fact, their real selves. Stripped of artifice and social training. It was easy enough to be decent when all was going your way. It was another matter to be decent when all hell was breaking loose.

There's no wrong answer. Just the truth.

She's a triumph of image over reality. I'm not even sure if she knows what reality is anymore, she's so busy creating this image of herself.

He felt in Three Pines he had a shot at being himself. What he hadn't counted on was it taking so long to figure out who 'he' was.

They could stop being pillars and just be people.

It is the chiefest point of happiness, she scribbled quickly, before the Commander could see, that a man is willing to be what he is." Chapter 6 · Page 53 · Location 957

Better to bloom even for an instant, if that's your nature, than live forever in hiding.

You know Gabri, he wears his heart on his sleeve.' In fact, there were times Olivier wondered whether Gabri hadn't been born inside out. Before

He said that if we thought we ould compartmentalize things, we were deluding ourselves. Everyone we meet, every word we speak, every action taken or not taken lives in our longhouse. With us. Always. Never to be expelled or locked away.

Attachment masquerades as Love,

So unusual was it for someone to actually think on the witness stand. They answered clear questions by telling the rehearsed truth, or a preplanned lie. But they rarely actually thought.

one question. What do I really want to do? Not for my friends, not for my family. Not for perfect strangers. But for me. Finally. It was my turn, my time. And this is yours, Armand. Yours and Reine-Marie's. What do you really want?

Your soul shines through even if you haven't got mascara on

It's hard to tell the truth sometimes, especially if you don't want to hurt someone. And you did. You said what you feel. And you must do what is right for you, not what other people say is right.

Life is not a dress rehearsal - nor do you have an understudy.