Stephen Spender Quotes

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

Basically, I think that there are some characters that you can just allow the truth of your character as a human being in your real life to come through.

I am excited to show people how, when you get older, you get deeper, you get more raw, you get more honest, and you stop pretending to be the person you think people want you to be. I stopped worrying about what people wanted me to say and just sort of dug deep into my personal arsenal of my mistakes and shameful thoughts.

2020 for me is a really big year of realness and authenticity and just being who I am.

A journal is your completely unaltered voice - it's just for you. And if you know that voice, and you like it, you can bring it out to everyone else, and that's the most honest and vulnerable thing you can do.

I'm trying to know who I am and be honest about it.

Maybe some of the pronouns have changed, but I've always been honest in my music.

The hardest thing to remember is that what we each really want is the truth of our lives, good or bad. Not rocking the boat is an illusion that can only be maintained by the unspoken agreement not to feel and in the long run it never really works. Let go of saving the boat and save the passengers instead.

When you eliminate vanity from an art form, and I would think that this would be any art form, what is left is an opportunity to be incredibly naked and truthful.

I always write what feels really true and honest and me.

I found that the more truthful and vulnerable I was, the more empowering it was for me.

It's not always easy to identify your own voice. It comes with time.

Being so honest in my writing is cathartic.

It is when I am working that the real me comes out - that is when I am the most real and honest.

In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way.

I could do nice, but it's just not as much fun. Being nice isn't my biggest goal in life. I'm trying to be honest about who I am, and that's not always nice. I'm not always the world's cheerleader.

On the first album I was saying, that's just one part of me. And then I was thinking, well, am I going to hide the rest of me now just because I'm afraid of something? No. I'm just going to be myself.

You never find yourself until you face the truth.

If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.

When we are honest - that's my saying - if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.

You can't respect yourself if you're afraid to be who you are.

Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

I tell the truth, and I expose myself as a weak, misguided, misdirected, dysfunctional human being I used to be.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?