Quotes About Authenticity

pareció que no hacía daño a nadie. Y, en todo caso, en la vida de una mujer llega un momento en que se cansa de sentirse culpable todo el rato. A partir de ese momento, es libre de convertirse en quien de verdad es.

there came a point in my life when I stopped doing this—when I stopped responding to life's challenges with floods of tears. Because really, there is no dignity in it. These days, I am the sort of tough-skinned old battle-ax who would rather stand dry-eyed and undefended in the most hostile underbrush of truth than degrade herself and everyone else by collapsing into a swamp of manipulative tears.

Tell people the hammered truth, and it will ring like steel against an anvil.

It hardly mattered. She was tired of waiting for him to acknowledge who he was. Tired of donning a false mask of gaiety when she was so much more—felt so much more—beneath. No one had ever noticed her mask. No one but him. If he couldn't or wouldn't make the first move, then damn it, she would.

It's the reward of the business (historian), to look history in the eye & say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me.

It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me.

When there is nothing left to lose, we find the true self—the self that is whole, the self that is enough, the self that no longer looks to others for definition, or completion, or anything but companionship on the journey.

Your lesson in this lifetime is to find and trust your own precious voice.

he managed to create an atmosphere of sticky sentimentality that disgusted me.

Reputable scholars might have denied its authenticity, but there are always other scholars who disagree--and people will believe what they want to believe, never mind the evidence. If there is anything life has taught me, it is that there is no idea so absurd that someone will not accept it as truth, and no action so bizarre that it will not be justified in the eyes of a true believer.

Why, one person in the world, one single person belonging to one, of one's very own, to talk to, to take care of, to love, to be interested in, was worth more than all the speeches on platforms and the compliments of chairmen in the world. It was also worth more—Rose couldn't help it, the thought would come—than all the prayers.

I intend to scream, shout, race the engine, call when I feel like it, throw tantrums in Bloomingdale's if I feel like it and confess intimate details about my life to complete strangers. I intend to do what I want to do and be whom I want to be and answer only to myself: that is, quite simply, the bitch philosophy...

I am sick of the girl who cries 'wolf' all the time. Even though not one of those cries was ever a false alarm

I am so tired of the girl in the infirmary, I am so sick of the girl who cries wolf all the time - even though not one of those cries was ever a false alarm. Not one of my pleas was ever less than truly urgent because when it's all in your mind, there always IS a wolf.

A deeply true, wholly aching account of the dangerous way we live now--LOVE JUNKIE is great fun to read, and finally fully redemptive. Rachel Resnick brings a light, delightful touch to a hard subject, and creates a great, relatable, readable memoir.

Those days that I tried to be the little girl I was supposed to be drained me. I went home at night and cried for hours because so many people in my life expecting me to be a certain way was too much pressure, as if I'd been held against a wall and interrogated for hours, asked questions I couldn't quite answer any longer.

All the backpedaling and backstepping that goes on with powerful women today, with Hillary Clinton saying she could have stayed home and baked cookies and blah blah blah, and then offending everybody so that she had to say that she does, in fact, *love* to make cookies, loves it almost as much as she likes to trade agricultural futures. I mean, what is that about? All this I'm really a lady, I'm really a nice girl crap- who needs it? It really is nothing more than surrender.

Yes, there was a certain beautiful honesty to my depressed state—I miss it sometimes now. I miss having so little stake in maintaining the status quo that I could walk out of rooms in tears at times that other people would have deemed inappropriate. I liked that about myself. I liked that disregard for convention.

When would I stop wondering what right—what nerve—I had to be depressed? Enough with this going on about all my blessings. I was starting to sound like a character in a TV movie with a title like The Best Little Girl in the World or Most Likely to Succeed.

Everyone has the right to tell the truth about her own life.

There is comfort in knowing that you don't have to pretend anymore, that you are going to do everything within your power to heal.

In spite of the horror, in spite of the tragedy, in spite of the weeks of sleepless nights, I'm finally alive. I'm not pretending. I feel real. I'm not playing charades anymore. I wouldn't go back to the way I was for anything. I'm really like a different person. I'm where I am, and I'm making the most of it. I know I'm courageous now. I found out I had it in me to face this. — Barbara

What you do and what you are is what matters.

If I won't be myself, who will?