Quotes About Authenticity

To take that risk, to offer life and remain alive, open yourself like this and become whole.

She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving...But I think these things are impenetrable and fraudulent, and I can't do them without feeling I'm acting.

Apart from all this, I do of course have a real life. I sometimes have trouble believing in it, because it doesn't seem like the kind of life I could ever get away with, or deserve. This goes along with another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

You'll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don't be deluded by any other endings, they're all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality. The only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date.

Is it real? No, it is not real. What is this not real? Not real can tell us about real.

Real painters grunt like Marlon Brando

On the way home from school we go to the record store... [Cordelia] expects me to roll my eyes in ecstasy, the way she does; she expects me to groan. She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving, now that we're in high school. But I think these things are impenetrable and fraudulent, and I can't do them without feeling I'm acting.

The possibility of injury or death was a strong attraction: as the online world became more and more pre-edited and slicked up, and as even its so-called reality sites raised questions about authenticity in the minds of the viewers, the rough, unpolished physical world was taking on a mystic allure.

By the time he got around to meaning it, the words had sounded fraudulent to him and he'd been afraid to pronounce them.

That birthday was the day I discovered that I was a fraud. Or not a fraud, like a bad magician: a fake, like a fake antique. I was a forgery, done on purpose.

No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster." —GEORGE ELIOT, DANIEL DERONDA

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.

They have a certain gaiety to them, a power of invention, they don't care what people think. They have escaped, though what it is they've escaped from isn't clear to us. We think that their bizarre costumes, their verbal tics, are chosen, and that when the time comes we also will be free to choose. That's what I'm going to be like

Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbled, and I couldn't help him: it would take such time to heal, unearth him, scrape down to where he was true.

You're not my real parents, every child has thought. I'm not your real child. But with orphans, it's true. What freedom, to thumb your nose authentically!

I love you. You're the only one. She isn't the first woman he's ever said that to. He shouldn't have used it up so much earlier in his life, he shouldn't have treated it like a tool, a wedge, a key to open women. By the time he got around to meaning it, the words had sounded fraudulent to him and he'd been ashamed to pronounce them.

I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out.

When it came to love, wasn't believing the same as the real thing?

It wasn't just the sex." A dark smile from her: that's better. "You know I love you. You're the only one." She isn't the first woman he's ever said that to. He shouldn't have used it up so much earlier in his life, he shouldn't have treated it like a tool, a wedge, a key to open women. By the time he got around to meaning it, the words had sounded fraudulent to him and he'd been ashamed to pronounce them.

Watching the many faces watching their own faces as they pretended to be someone else—Felix found that strangely moving. For once in their lives, they loved themselves.

But Jimmy, you should know. All sex is real.

And they're smiling at her, not half-smiles either, but full-on total-face smiles that are only partly fake.