Quotes About Authenticity

It's better to do your purpose imperfectly than to do someone else's purpose perfectly.

The need to be right can arise from a fear of being disrespected. Or it may come out of the fear of being seen as we really are: as flawed human beings who are perfectly imperfect and full of contradictions and confusions.

I think the name perfectly encapsulates my soul, and so I get to be myself with the safety of a different name.

You can perform all kind of characters but you cannot change what people feel for you.

I was king of the mountain for a long time, well, I don't want that no more. I like to perform every once in a while for people who want to see me, and cut albums of music that is what I'm really about.

I would never lay down a pre-programmed set and perform to a pre-mixed CD; I would never cheat my fans like that.

For me, I've always told myself, 'I can only do me in the ring.' When I go out there and perform, I can only do what Sasha Banks can do.

'Bloodlight and Bami' delivers. Ms. Jones shucks her own oysters - stressfully. She does her own make up and performs her own vexed yet amusing contract negotiations.

If I had to perform in a comedy club I would bomb; I would be trying too hard.

When I write, I'm sort of old-fashioned in the sense that I like to write something that I feel I could just perform alone, obviously, because I do that a lot in concert.

I like to perform live like we're all just hanging out in my living room. I'm totally casual and informal on stage.

Latinos are very passionate, and they perform a lot, and look at me, I'm talking with my hands, and this is just my normal self, so it kind of allows me to be who I am and not dumb it down.

I'm a musician. I'm not, like, a personality. I've never really pretended to perform that kind of function.

I like a performance, a live performance, so I like little mistakes because that's what makes perfect - the mistakes.

I can see it in even great actors' performances, when they're phoning it in.

I'm committed to an honest expression, not necessarily a performance.

Even if the songs are at times painful - 'cause some of the songs are not all roses and balloons; some of them dig into deep things that I've been going through - there's a joy that I think people feel from my music and, hopefully, from my performance because I am so in love with doing what I do.

As actors, we are expected to come up with an exaggerated performance, which is far from reality.

When you see my performances, even people that you might have known, like Nicky Barnes in 'American Gangster,' you have to get over the fact that I look like Cuba Gooding, Jr. But once you find truth in the performance, if I'm doing my job right, you believe everything.

It was more freeing, mainly because he's so free anyway. He just is in his performance. So to mimic someone doing a free performance, well, that's pretty freeing within itself.

No one will ever argue that someone could have played Helen Keller better than Patty Duke. It was an incredibly demanding role and I don't think anyone can argue that it was a false performance.

We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn.

I just keep it real, and I have written songs from my heart and performed them how they should be performed.

I want my audience to be my friends - that is when they will get the best comedy. If they see me as a performer, they won't get the best show.