Quotes About Authenticity

Everything is real. It is one of our golden rules for the show. We won't do it otherwise because the show is built around real reaction, ours included.

You can't get the reaction that any hidden-camera show gets from people in any other way besides a hidden-camera show - and I love that reaction.

I just want real reactions. I want people to laugh from the gut, be sad from the gut - or get angry from the gut.

I like to show my cards and see people's reactions.

I don't think you can write from a reactive place. I think you just write the thing you want to write about, and if other people are writing about it, that doesn't really come to bear on what you want to do.

In a memoir, your main contract with the reader is to tell the truth, no matter how bizarre.

I have no particular reader in mind, but a passionate desire to tell an honest, moving story.

My job is to allow the character to live and breathe - and become as real to the reader as he or she is to me.

I like to blur the line between fact and fiction, but not to condescend to the reader by enmeshing her/him into some sort of a postmodern coop.

To make the reader afraid, I had to be afraid.

The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow.

I am not a good cue card reader.

The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.

If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling. I don't want to open up my cornflakes and find that they're full of pebbles... You need to respect the reader enough not to call it something it isn't.

Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up.

No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

The kind of true-life writing that is fun to read - that makes an ally of the reader - is the kind that you are so nervous about putting down on paper that you lock the Word file with a secret password and encrypt it - and all of it.

Write about what you care about. If you do that, you're probably going to do your best writing, reach off the page and touch the reader. How are you going to make the reader care if you don't care yourself?

I would say if you want to write, write what you care about. I think that's the most important thing. I think if you write what you care about, you stand a better chance of having the reader care about your story.

One thing we never did with 'Bad Company' was talk down to our reader. And we certainly don't do that with the new story, 'Bad Company, First Casualties.'

My writing is a very authentic journey of discovery. I'm going out there to learn who I am. My readers, consequently, take the same journey as my protagonist.

Truth, honesty, empowerment - it's what I want for myself and my readers.

The memoir industry is, what's the word? Under regulated. I think it needs to be pruned. If there are too many books right now and the market for readers is shrinking, I think we can get rid of many of the memoirs. Another memoir should be awfully well justified before it gets published.

I made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing.