Quotes About Authenticity

Most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning.

She was incurably dishonest.

the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.

People invariably chose inimitable people to imitate.

I don't want just words. If that's all you have for me, you'd better go.

Sometimes I don't know whether Zelda and I are real or just characters in one of my novels.

What was it? Why won't you tell me? I don't want to break down your illusions. My dear man, I have no illusions about you. I mean illusions about yourself.

We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something and turned around. 'They're a rotten crowd,' I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.' I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end.

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type: begin with a type, and you find that you have created - nothing. That is because we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want anyone to know or than we know ourselves.

I saw that for a long time I had not liked people and things, but only followed the rickety old pretense of liking. I saw that even my love for those closest to me was become only an attempt to love, that my casual relations — with an editor, a tobacco seller, the child of a friend, were only what I remembered I should do, from other days.

Beware of losing yourself in the personality of another being, man or woman.

Writers aren't exactly people. They're a whole lot of people, trying to be one person.

If you write me letters, please let them be natural ones. 

As he spoke there was in his heart that tremulousness that we take for sincerity in ourselves.

BEAUTY: Bogus? What is bogus? THE VOICE: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.

he was learning the rarity in a single life, of encountering true emotion.

Then tell me all the reasons why you're going to marry me in June." "Well, because you're so clean. You're sort of blowy clean, like I am. There's two sorts, you know. One's like Dick: he's clean like polished pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is.

Technically excellent, perhaps, but not convincing.

No, I'm thinking about myself - my black old inside self, the real one, with the fundamental honesty that keeps me from being absolutely wicked by making me realize my own sins.

The growth of intimacy is like that. First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and a third--before long the best lines cancel out--and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the pictures have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture.

For the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.

Almost impersonally he was convinced that no woman he had ever met compared in any way with Gloria. She was deeply herself; she was immeasurably sincere—of these things he was certain. Beside her the two dozen schoolgirls and débutantes, young married women and waifs and strays whom he had known were so many females, in the word's most contemptuous sense, breeders and bearers, exuding still that faintly odorous atmosphere of the cave and the nursery.

Dresses well. Pretends that dress is superficial—but knows that it isn't. 3.

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.