Quotes About Authenticity

To try to be authentic these days, to ask questions of the people in power - it's difficult. This administration has evolved new techniques to handle people like me. Their strategy, in a word, is simple: ignore them.

Using modern guitar techniques and modern methods on an early instrument is not a very clever thing to do, because it is the authentic spirit of the instrument that should dictate the quality and characteristic of the sound.

I wanted to make '13 Assassins' in the old manner, to use old techniques and not to rely on modern-day ones such as CGI, or editing that changes the speed.

Ideally, the music composed these days should sound much better because of the technology, right? But that's not the fact. The sounds that you hear out of technological recording are programmed sounds coming out of a computer.

Technology can become a crutch. Sometimes it's there just to hide behind when you're shy of what you're trying to say.

Actually, I can't imagine anything more tedious than a perfect person, especially if it was someone who also demanded perfection from me.

Much protective self-criticism stems from growing up around people who wouldn't or couldn't love you, and it's likely they still can't or won't. In general, however, the more you let go of the tedious delusion of your own unattractiveness, the easier it will be for others to connect with you, and the more accepted you'll feel.

I put on whatever is comfortable on me. Suit, jeans and tee as long as it's comfortable. It doesn't matter what brand. If it looks good I buy it.

I became a master of disguise and could play the straight man down to a tee, sometimes over-compensating by getting into fights or being overly aggressive because I didn't want the real me to be found out. So I created this alter ego, knowing full well that I was living in my little fantasy bubble, my shell.

'Catcher in the Rye.' I feel like any brooding teen loves that book.

I feel really honored to be part of The #seetherealme campaign. It's really amazing, as it helps many teen girls who are struggling. It helps them to find themselves and be true to who they are.

My whole life, growing up, I always wanted to be in comedy. I never felt comfortable doing the 'teen hunk' thing.

As a white teen, I was very drawn to hip-hop culture, almost to the point of disappearing in it - there was a sense of having no sense of authenticity except this one that wasn't mine.

I would love for a movie that I'm really proud of to launch my career but I wouldn't like it to be some teen kind of thing that I did for money.

I always joke deep down I'm really a teenage girl on the inside.

It's insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It's that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he's telling you something about his own life. It's so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

I'd change nothing in my career path. I was never built for being a handsome teenage star. That's just not in my psyche, I think. I would have hated to have grown up famous.

I don't want to be that artist who's doing the teenage angst thing and draw it out my whole career.

Teenage girls these days are more and more getting lured into thinking they should dumb themselves down, and that's going to attract the wrong kind of guy, and it's serious. It's serious business.

When I was young, there weren't any teenage girls I could relate to in film. They were all put in boxes: the virginal good girl, the really sarcastic asexual one. I wanted to do something that represented how I felt then.

I write simple songs, and people like that. They're mature enough to appeal to people who aren't teenage girls. Most of my fans are older, and it's nice to think the songs can appeal to middle-aged men and women.

I spent my teenage years and early 20s being manipulated - well, not manipulated, but I was told what to do and what to say by agents and managers, and when I was around 23 I thought 'I am sick of pretending to be someone and saying all these things that don't really resonate with me.'

I might once have had a pair of jeans briefly in my teenage years before I realised they weren't for me. I don't love my legs but, hey, they're mine, so I accept them.

Femininity in general is seen as frivolous. People often say feminine people are doing 'the most,' meaning that to don a dress, heels, lipstick and big hair is artifice, fake, and a distraction. But I knew even as a teenager that my femininity was more than just adornments: they were extensions of me, enabling me to express myself and my identity.