Quotes About Authenticity

Sad people are the only real ones. They can tell you the truth about things; they have always known that there is no one you can depend upon forever and no change in your life, however great, that can keep you from being in the end what you were in the beginning: lost and lonely

Leroy remained silent, and no wonder; Maggie knew how chirpy and artificial she sounded. An old person, trying too hard. But if only Leroy could see that Maggie was still young underneath, just peering out from behind an older face mask!

The first thing I tell people is, I'm just an ordinary woman. I'm just like you, I say, I can see they don't believe me.

The beast in man had lifted its mask and the time of euphemistic niceties and rationalizations was over.

People follow a person who they feel "speaks the Truth.

The magic of influence is less in what we say and more in how we say it and who we are.

We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

Write as if you were dying.

1. Only a total unself-consciousness will permit me to live with myself" (202).

An honest work generates its own power; a dishonest work tries to rob power from the cataracts of the given.

For me, writing's the only thing that's always real. I've never regretted a day I wrote a good scene, whatever else I screwed up that day. That's what's fucking real.

My whole life, I always thought that I was the only impostor. That everyone else was certain they were real in some way that I could never understand. But what if they're all just faking too? Maybe none of us know who we really are.

the things we write, they aren't always really us.

Maybe none of us know who we really are.

But I feel more real when I'm around her. Like I'm not fading.

We don't have to look like everyone else...and act like everyone else. We've got a choice. We can grow up any way we want...It's about becoming what I want to become, not what some surgical committee thinks I should.

Tally snorted. "I don't think it's exactly boring, Shay." "Doing what you're supposed to do is always boring. I can't imagine anything worse than being required to have fun." "I can," Tally said quietly. "Never having any.

He turned to face her again, his late-pretty composure crumbling. "But you're . . ." "Pretty? Think again." She smiled. "I'm Tally Youngblood. My mind is very ugly. And I'm taking your car.

Don't worry, Aya-la," Tally said, firmly grasping her wrist. "You'll still be real, even with no hovercam watching.

Maybe this time she could show him what was really inside her, deeper than any operation could reach.

what you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful

For me, writing's the only thing that's always real. I've never regretted a day I wrote a good scene, whatever else I screwed up that day. That's what's fucking real.

Nobody contrived for Stevie to be a foxy chick. It just emerged. She moves and dances purely because she likes dancing. But she has a split personality. Onstage she's the goddess of whatever, but offstage she's very often like a little old lady with a cold or a sore throat. Yet she's amazing—she can feel like shit before she goes onstage but then she goes out there and pulls out the stops.