Quotes About Authenticity

They were all things she would not give away in New York, where she watched others tell their drunken bar stories, prostituting their families and their trauma for popularity and booze. These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors.

Ruth did not believe in makeup. She thought it demeaned women.

Your sordid life is your sordid life. You shouldn't live it if you don't like it.

Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

Always with me was the inner twin: my true nature, my true self. It is timeless, free, compassionate and in love with whatever is natural to me.-

You must learn to love only that which cannot be stolen

Para mí es un misterio que a una mujer tenga que importarle ni un comino lo que la gente pueda pensar de ella.

It is a way of saying you must not live too much in your head. It is a way of reminding you to stay in your emotions, no matter how nutty they are; it is a way of saying, also, that craziness has value.

The challenge for me is not to be a follower of Something but to embody it;

She bound to live her life and be herself no matter what.

Shug act more manly than most men, I mean she upright, honest. Speak her mind and the devil take the hindmost, he say. You know Shug will fight, he say. Just like Sofia. She bound to live her life and be herself no matter what. Mr. -- thin all this is stuff men do. But Harpo not like this, I tell him. You not like this. What Shug got is womanly it seem like to me. Specially since she and Sofia the ones got it.

The experience I had last night is the only kind she's interested in. [...] being with the people of the world in a certain way, he elaborated, noting her look. A way that erases all boundaries and bullshit.

Now he realized he'd probably understood nothing, and it also occurred to him what a superficial, ultimately fraudulent act it was to sleep with a person you did not really know.

We must acknowledge and reclaim our true size. Dignity is important. Self-respect. We cannot lead by pretending to be powerless. We're not. Age is power. Or it can be if it isn't distracted by shopping and cooking and trying to look nineteen.

what is good is integral to itself. That is also why it is not worthwhile to change yourself, your hair or skin or eyes. What is integral to you will always be superior to what is tacked on, simply because it is yours.

Because I know. Grown-up white men don't want to pretend to be anything else. Not even for a minute.

Look like to me only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel peculiar to your mind.

She was a literal speaker. What she expressed she both felt and was.

He say to tell the truth, Shug act more manly than most men. I mean she upright, honest. Speak her mind and the devil take the hindmost, he say. You know Shug will fight, he say. Just like Sofia. She bound to live her life and be herself no matter what.

I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way...I can't apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to... We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful...We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose.

People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way...I can't apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to... We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful...We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose

Let things taste of what they are.

You can't live and write at the same time.