Quotes About Authenticity

It's okay to like things for literally no other reason than because you like them and not because they are cool or clever or popular.

An online profile of your best friend is not your best friend. A status update about a day in the park is not a day in the park. And the desire to tell the world about how happy you are is not how happy you are.

Happiness occurs when you for get who you're expected to be. And what you're expected to do. Happiness is an accident of self acceptance. It's the warm breeze you feel when you open the door to who you are.

You are right to think of these lives like a piano where you're playing tunes that aren't really you. You are forgetting who you are. In becoming everyone, you are becoming no one. You are forgetting your root life. You are forgetting what worked for you and what didn't. You are forgetting your regrets.

I want to read books that make me laugh and cry and fear and hope and punch the air in triumph. I want a book to hug me or grab me by the scruff of my neck. I don't even mind if it punches me in the gut. Because we are here to feel.

I should also say, in case it needs saying: I don't know for sure that the words I write were the words that were actually spoken. They probably weren't. But this is how I remember these things, and all we can ever be is faithful to our memories of reality, rather than the reality itself, which is something closely related but never precisely the same thing.

It's such a weird thing for young people to look at distorted images of things they should be.' —Daisy Ridley, on why she quit Instagram

Facebook is where everyone lies to their friends. Twitter is where they tell the truth to strangers.

Words – spoken or written – are what connect us to the world, and so speaking about it to people, and writing about this stuff, helps connect us to each other, and to our true selves.

Don't do the work people expect you to do. Do the work you want to do. You only get one life. It's always best to live it as yourself.

We don't have to do everything in order to be everything

If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it.

I think intellectualism can be a barrier to reading. The point of a book - song, film, whatever - is to FEEL it. That's why we're here, no?

She wouldn't poison herself with the pressures of imagined perfection.

A veces los arrepentimientos no tienen ninguna base. Algunas veces son simplemente fake news

Ratings are no sign of worth. Never judge yourself on them. To be liked by everyone you would have to be the blandest person ever. William Shakespeare is arguably the greatest writer of all time. He has a mediocre 3.7 average on Goodreads.

You will regret the fear. In The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware—a nurse who worked in palliative care—shared her experience of talking to those near the end of their lives. Far and away the biggest regret they had was fear. Many of Bronnie's patients were in deep anguish that they had spent their whole lives worrying. Lives consumed by fear. Worrying what other people thought of them. A worry that had stopped them being true to themselves.

The challenge is to find who we are amid the crowd of ourselves.

It's okay to let people find you. You don't have to spread yourself so thin you become invisible. You don't have to always be the person reaching out. You can sometimes allow yourself to be reached. As the great writer Anne Lamott puts it: "Lighthouses don't go running all over an island for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

Things I should do less of on the internet Post about a meaningful experience, when I could be having an actual meaningful experience.

I was convinced I wasn't made for the reality of the world. And in a way, I was right. I wasn't made for the world. I was, like everyone, made by the world. I was made by parents and culture and TV and books and politics and school and maybe even shopping centres. So, I either needed a new me. Or a new planet. And I didn't yet know how to find either. Which is why I felt suicidal.

Be happy with your own self, minus upgrades. Stop dreaming of imaginary goals and finishing lines. Accept what marketing doesn't want you to: you are fine. You lack nothing.

You must never wait in pain,' said the specialist, or words to that effect. It was a message I would think of years later when I was suicidal. 'You must see to it straight away. It doesn't go away by pretending it isn't there.

If, as Schopenhauer said, "we forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people," then love—at its best—is a way to reclaim those lost parts of ourselves. That freedom we lost somewhere quite early in childhood. Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.