Quotes About Authenticity

There's truth in the idea we're never going to be perfect in love but we can get close. And the closer we get, the healthier we will be. Love is not a game any of us can win, it's just a story we can live and enjoy.

And once you know what it takes to live a better story, you don't have a choice. Not living a better story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around numb until you die, and it's not natural to want to die.

Of all the principles I'd learn about story, the idea that a character is what he does remains the hardest to actually live.

Lucy doesn't read self-help books about how to be a dog; she just is a dog.

If honesty is the key to intimacy, it means we don't have to be perfect and, moreover, we don't have to pretend to be perfect.

Paul was terribly personal. The books I like are the ones that make you feel like you are with a person who is being quite vulnerable, telling you all sorts of stuff that is personal, and that's the thing Paul did that makes me like him.

I LIKE WHAT THE DANCER MARTHA GRAHAM ONCE said, that each of us is unique and if we didn't exist something in the world would have been lost. I wonder, then, why we are so quick to conform—and what the world has lost because we have.

What attracts us doesn't always connect us. I can't tell you how many friends I have who have been taken in by somebody sexy or powerful or charming but soon after find themselves feeling alone in the relationship. It's one thing to impress people, but it's another to love them.

Because the more we hide, the harder it is to be known. And we have to be known to connect.

You can't memorize poetry and stay a fake. Sooner or later, you start to understand what these poets are saying, and it makes you feel life has something quite special, with certain layers of meaning to it.

This means that when we ramble on and on about how we have the biggest manufacturing plant on the West Coast, our customers don't care. Why? Because that information isn't helping them eat, drink, find a mate, fall in love, build a tribe, experience a deeper sense of meaning, or stockpile weapons in case barbarians start coming over the hill behind our cul-de-sac. So what do customers do when we blast a bunch of noise

And that's the first time I realized that the idea a character is what he does makes as much sense in life as it does in the movies. I thought about my friend's story from his wife's perspective. She only knows what he says and what he does, not what he thinks and what he feels. I'm sure his wife picked up on his newfound enthusiasm, but it did help me realize the stories we tell ourselves are very different from the stories we tell the world.

IS THERE ANYTHING MORE TOXIC THAN THE FEAR of being judged? Judgment shuts us down and makes us hide. It keeps us from being ourselves, which keeps us from connecting with other people.

You are wired like you and I am wired like me. The more fully we live into ourselves, the more impact we will have. Acting may get us the applause we want, but taking a risk on being ourselves is the only path toward true intimacy. And true intimacy, the exchange of affection between two people who are not lying, is transforming.

After all, to love somebody is to give them the power to hurt you, and nobody can hurt you if you're the only one writing the script.

But in so many ways I'm still that kid, not sure exactly how to be emotionally intimate with a girl without feeling weak, not sure my work is good enough, not sure if the people who are clapping would really like me if they got to know me (page 2)

It costs personal fear to be authentic but the reward is integrity, and by that I mean a soul fully integrated, no difference between his act and his actual person.

if we live behind a mask we can impress but we can't connect.

I am willing to sound dumb. I am willing to be wrong. I am willing to be passionate about something that isn't perceived as cool.

Having integrity is about being the same person on the inside that we are on the outside, and if we don't have integrity, life becomes exhausting. I wonder how many people get tempted by the gains they can make by playing a role, only to pay for those temptations in public isolation.

She said I didn't have to perform for her. She didn't have to say that. I knew it was true. Who else do you marry but the person who pulls you off the stage?

I knew then, this relationship would have to be different. I knew I'd have to know myself and be known. These weren't only terrifying prospects, they were foreign. I didn't know how to do either. And the stakes were high. I was going to have to either learn to be healthy or I'd spend the rest of my life pretending. It was either intimacy or public isolation.

It's one thing to impress people, but it's another to love them.

Unless we're honest with each other, we can't connect. We can't be intimate.