Quotes about Authenticity

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

The harder we press on a violin string, the less we can feel it. The louder we play, the less we hear.… If I "try" to play, I fail; if I race, I trip. The only road to strength is vulnerability. —STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH

Your gender should not matter in your heart or in the way you express your personality.

When somebody comes across as authentic and genuine and sweet, people just want to spend time with that person.

I wouldn't play glamour for glamour.

I think some people who say they're not Christians can behave in a more godly fashion than people who call themselves Christians.

Crying does not equal good acting.

You use your real voice with those you love, and you cannot be phony with those who know you well.

I find I need to put things into words before I can believe that they are entirely real.

The writers who get my personal award are the ones who show exceptional promise of looking at their lives in this world as candidly and searchingly and feelingly as they know how and then of telling the rest of us what they have found there most worth finding. We need the eyes of writers like that to see through. We need the blood of writers like that in our veins.

We are all such escape artists, you and I. We don't like to get too serious about things, especially about ourselves. When we are with other people, we are apt to talk about almost anything under the sun except for what really matters to us, except for our own lives, except for what is going on inside our own skins. We pass the time of day. We chatter. We hold each other at bay, keep our distance from each other even when God knows it is precisely each other that we desperately need.