Quotes About Authenticity

Don't teach necessarily what others teachers are teaching. Find what it is that you have to offer and teach that.

Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

Teachers wondered why I didn't speak up more in class. Why would I when I knew how precarious words could be, how betraying they were, how vulnerable they made you?

What attracted me to Zen was my first teacher, Tim McCarthy. He was extremely genuine. It wasn't even really a Zen thing, that sort of came along later.

Comedians act every night on stage, so they have great performing chops. They especially know how to play themselves, which is how we set 'Teachers Lounge' up.

Perhaps teachers must be good actors where lessons are concerned, but in life outside the class, we mustn't hide from our pupils our individual spirits.

As a dancer, one of my many teachers along the way made the comment that who I was onstage and who I was off were two totally different people.

Eat where the people eat, not the hotels and touristy restaurants. If a local teacher makes $50 a month and they're living decently, see what they do.

Just as novels have come to be seen as narratives of identity, so too has politics become, for many, a search for personal authenticity, a journey of self-discovery.

io, mio caro, non credo nell'amore universale. L'amore esiste in dosi modiche. Si possono amare forse cinque fra uomini e donne, dieci magari, talvolta financo quindici. E anche questo solo assai di rado. Ma se uno arriva e mi dice che ama tutto il Terzo mondo, o ama l'America Latina, o ama il sesso femminile, quello non è amore ma retorica. Pura demagogia. Slogan. Non siamo nati per amare più di una manciata di persone.

Really," "really and truly," those code words which barely conceal a lie.)

I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and over again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.

I am not quite myself, I think. But who here is quite himself? And yet there is a way in which we are all more ourselves than ever, I suppose.

It's the natural trajectory of a writing career that a writer becomes better at being herself.

Who am I? Oh, yes: I'm the kind of person who doesn't like fiction, country music, or cilantro. We use these defining truths to help us stay in the lines of ourselves. We think we have to hold on to these labels, we feel comfortable holding on to these labels, but it turns out the labels are removable, you can peel them right off.

Being yourself seems like the most effortless thing in the world—duh, who else are you going to be? But it's deceiving, tricky, a summons laden with meandering and failed attempts—and then at last, so wondrously simple.

Imperfections don't make something ugly.

Failure to shed tears is a failure to live life fully. And the one thing that life requires of us all is to live it. Never be embarrassed by your ability to be alive.

She had a way of bringing out genuineness in the least genuine of people.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.

Writing is the witness to myself about myself. Whatever others say of me or how they interpret me is a simulacrum of their own devising.

If you want to take pictures of Chinese food, you have to taste real Chinese food. The flavors soak into your tongue, go into your stomach. The stomach is where your true feelings are. And if you take photos, these true feelings from your stomach can come out, so that everyone can taste the food just by looking at your pictures.

I'm not consciously hiding anything.' After Ruth said that she wondered whether it was true. Then again, who revealed everything - the irritation, the fears? How tiresome that would be.