Quotes About Truth

As close as we had been when we were together, we were closer in our unraveling, telling each other everything at last, words that seemed to us might never have been spoken between two human beings before, so deep we went, saying everything that was beautiful and ugly and true.

you are so goddamned young. Which means about eight of the ten things you have decided about yourself will over time prove to be false. The other two things will prove to be so true that you'll look back in twenty years and howl.

It's a lie you've told yourself that has flattened down whatever hurts.

These are not pretty things, but they are true things.

You go on by doing the best you can. You go on by being generous. You go on by being true. You go on by offering comfort to others who can't go on. You go on by allowing the unbearable days to pass and by allowing the pleasure in other days. You go on by finding a channel for your love and another for your rage.

Eight of the ten things you have decided about yourself at the age of twenty will, over time, prove to be false. The other two things will prove to be so true that you'll look back in twenty years and howl.

There are stories hidden in the language we use, whether we're conscious of them or not. They tell the truth of our hearts and minds.

There are no composite characters or events in this book. I occasionally omitted people and events, but only when that omission had no impact on either the veracity or the substance of the story.

It creates a secret you're too beautiful to keep

The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding.

Be brave. Write what's true for you. Write what you think. What about what confuses you and compels you. Write about the crazy, hard, and beautiful. Write what scares you. Write what makes you laugh and write what makes you weep. What what makes you feel ashamed or proud. Writing is risk and revelation. There's no need to show up at the party if you're only going to stand around with your hands in your pockets and stare at the drapes.

I think I cry because it always strikes me as sacred, all those people going by. People who decided simply to live their truth, even when doing so wasn't simple. Each and every one of them had the courage to say, This is who I am even if you'll crucify me. Just like Jesus did.

It's reality. And reality is what we have to accept, like it or not.

This is not the way I wanted it to be, that single honey said, but it was the way it was.

Honor is inconvenient and absolute. Honor is looking it square in the face and taking it on the chin. It's having the guts to break someones heart so as to avoid fucking with his or her head.

God was not a granter of wishes. God was a ruthless bitch.

If you had to give one piece of advice to people in their twenties, what would it be? To go to a bookstore and buy ten books of poetry and read them each five times. Why? Because the truth is inside.

But an ethical and evolved life also entails telling the truth about oneself and living out that truth.

I prayed and prayed, and then I faltered. Not because I couldn't find God, but because suddenly I absolutely did: God was there, I realized, and God had no intention of making things happen or not, of saving my mother's life. God was not a granter of wishes. God was a ruthless bitch.

It was all unknown to me then...everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That it was enough to trust that what I'd done was true....It was my life--like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.

What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? …What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

Withholding distorts reality.

When you're speaking in the truest, most intimate voice about your life, you are speaking with the universal voice.

it was enough to trust that what I'd done was true.