Quotes About Authenticity

Good writers serve their stories; bad writers serve their own agendas.

I am quite certain in my heart of hearts that modern music and modern art is not a conspiracy, but is a form of truth and integrity for those who practise it honestly, decently and with all their being.

Lisa, who told Griffin, that when Greg returned calls he sometimes ran the hair dryer near the phone and said he was on a private jet. Griffin kept this to himself because some people are so creepy that even to know this about them is a sign of dangerous proximity to contamination.

In fallenness one drifts along with the fads and trends of the crowd, caught up in the mindless busy-ness, and tranquillized by the secure feeling that everyone else is doing the same thing; things in general seem to have been worked out by us. Heidegger says that, in its fallenness, Dasein 'becomes blind to all its possibilities, and tranquillizes itself with that which is merely "actual"'. In its simplest form, fallenness is the non-awareness of what it means to be.

Casualness is the enemy of pretense.

That was almost his appeal: he was what he was. Twinkle in his eye, larceny in his soul.

All news was to some extent fake—he understood that very well, because he himself had faked it so many times in his career. This was why he had so naturally cottoned to the "fake news" label. "I've made stuff up forever, and they always print it," he bragged.

It's all exaggerated. My exaggerations are exaggerated.

You spend your life so worried about what others think, when in reality, people mostly don't think.

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray… I am myself the matter of my book.

Everyone recognizes me in my book, and my book in me.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was I.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom.

The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know how to be himself.

A single day spent doing things which fail to nourish the soul is a day stolen, mutilated, and discarded in the gutter of destiny.

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same. More than one person, doubtless like me, writes in order to have no face.

Si la sincérité, en elle-même, n'est rien, elle est la condition de tout.

Bloy was the ultimate weapon against the twentieth century, its mediocrity, its moronic 'engagement,' its cloying humanitarianism; against Sartre, and Camus, and all their political playacting; and against all those sickening formalists, the nouveau roman, the pointless absurdity of it all.

Mon boucher : «Monsieur Tournier, quand on vous connaît comme moi en vrai, on n'a pas besoin de lire vos livres, hein?»

Chi siamo davvero? E se la verità fosse altrove, diversa rispetto a quello che pensiamo? E se la parte autentica di ognuno di noi fosse nascosta proprio finché ci sforziamo di controllare tutto, perché ci sono tante cose da fare e non possiamo permetterci il lusso di essere, semplicemente essere, stanchi, depressi, svogliato, capricciosi, noiosi, persino sbagliati e dementi, ecco sì, questo: dementi?

The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one's self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.