Quotes About Authenticity

There's an audience that is paid to laugh at my jokes. I'm playing a character while I'm doing stand-up. Real stand-ups, man, they're playing themselves. I'd be far too terrified.

That's why fame freaks me out in a lot of ways - because how genuine of a connection can you have when you're a commodity, and a conversation with you means bragging rights? That's terrifying to me.

I didn't choose the fact that I was gay, but I did choose whether to live my life as a gay woman-that was the terrifying thing for me. Especially being a gay actress.

I remember hearing someone say that good acting is more about taking off a mask than putting one on, and in movie acting, certainly that's true. With the camera so close, you can see right down into your soul, hopefully. So being able to do that in a way is terrifying, and in another way, truly liberating. And I like that about it.

Well, I think in trying to make life seem real enough that one is moved to do something about the more atrocious things. By going really far afield into a completely fake world, maybe there's a chance to make things resonant somehow - or in this case, truly terrifying. To make it as bad as the real stuff that's happening.

Songwriting is the most terrifying thing to me, because you are really laying your heart out there.

I want to let all men and women know: Try going to a party or a dinner where you're completely fine with silences, and you don't fill them just to fill them. It's exhilarating and terrifying.

I don't think I'm an intentional liar, but I'm a little bit of an exaggerator sometimes. If I'm exaggerating, and the journalist exaggerates on top of that, then we end up in funny territory.

Hopefully I inspire people just to lose themselves a little bit. That's what I enjoy doing on stage: challenging myself with a new territory, like performing differently, moving differently, singing differently, just let people know that it's okay just to do something that they've never done before.

What's real? What's not? That's what I do in my act, test how other people deal with reality.

At the end, the key thing is you've got to live with yourself. That's the real test. Everything else is fleeting.

Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn't worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.

A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.

If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

You can over-think things. If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it and do it honestly. I also don't learn things for auditions, because I feel like it's just a test of memorising rather than being real.

The first test any poem must pass is no longer, 'Is it true to nature?' but a criterion looking in a different direction: namely, 'Is it sincere? Is it genuine?'

It took me at least all my 20s and some of my 30s to get the confidence to realise I could just write about what I wanted to write about without having to pass a test or look super clever.

I try not to set myself up as different or as a celebrity or special. I have a husband that can get on my nerves. I have kids that test my patience. I've got a cat I can't keep off the sofa. It's real. On a bad day, I'm reading 'Acts of Faith.'

Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth.

I'm honestly not the kind of person who wants to step up to a podium, test the microphone and be like, 'Hey, I'm homosexual and this is who I am, hear me roar.' That's not who I am.

I've learned that to expose yourself, to reveal yourself is a test of your humanness.

It's good to get your hands dirty a bit and to test how you see things at a given point. And it's very pleasing after writing something like 'Atonement' or 'On Chesil Beach,' which are historical, to get involved in some plausible re-enactment of the here and now.

If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly. I also don't learn things for auditions, because I feel like it's just a test of memorizing rather than being real. Maybe every other actor would think that was terrible, I don't know. But it seems to have worked for me, so far.

Nothing is held back on 'Testimony.'