Authenticity

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is... See more

I heard this quote from the writer Harold Brodkey who said, “I don’t understand privacy.” I’ve always understood privacy very well, but it’s like—what’s the point of taking your secrets to the grave, or even your banalities? We have this chance to let ourselves be known to other people, to fill out the web of humanity that we’ve been spreading for

... See more

What I want to say most is that I am not an improved or better version of myself than I was a year ago because that is no longer a goal — but I am a truer version, a closer-in version, a more expansive and open version, a less clinging-to-certainty version, and that, to me, counts for a lot more than seeking to endlessly upgrade myself.

Donald Glover in an interview with The New Yorker: “Authenticity is the journey of figuring out who you are through what you make.”

Make stuff only you can make. Stuff that makes you sigh in resignation after waiting for someone else to make happen so you can enjoy it, and realizing that’s never going to happen so you have to get off the couch and do it yourself

Confessional art can be beautiful, and it can be terrible; either way, to love it only as a representation of what we already know is to deny it, and ourselves, a much richer complexity. Pop music is where fantasies are played out, turned into mansions and lived in, where five hundred people can tumble out of a clown car and every dream comes true.

... See more