Louise Brooks Quotes

In terms of my life, I guess I want to share whatever I've learned really, which is basically one thing: know yourself, look for yourself, know what to look for, cherish it, be honest, be authentic, even if it hurts your feelings. That's not bad.

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

One of the commitments I made to myself when I decided to write a book was to be brutally honest, particularly about myself.

Its funny because when I did feel like I came out and I just felt like I was being truthful to myself, (it was at) that point I became very successful. So you know, it took a true kind of facing that truth of myself and being honest, that was when the real kind of fame or whatever that kind of stuff happened for me.

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.

I am carrying out my plan, so long formulated, of keeping a journal. What I most keenly wish is not to forget that I am writing for myself alone. Thus I shall always tell the truth, I hope, and thus I shall improve myself. These pages will reproach me for my changes of mind.

I was already in a groove and decided to initially write down everything, as I would in an actual diary, and then go back and take out what I was too shy to reveal. But I wound up leaving more in than I imagined, and that was because I wanted to be transparent and real.

Editing yourself is like an irksome coin toss. You've got to strip yourself of super ego and operate from the id. Maybe I've got my Freud mixed up. It's just hard to trade a beauty shot for the performance with truth and a brightly lit zit.

Being so honest in my writing is cathartic.

It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

I have faced up to what I am.

My life is an open pamphlet.

If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn’t begun.

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.

We only get better by telling our real story. That's the only way to be.

I don't tell the truth any more to those who can't make use of it. I tell it mostly to myself, because it always changes me.

Doffing the ego's safe glory, he finds his naked reality.

I was 45 when I wrote most of this book [Hungry Heart ], at what felt like a halfway point in my life, and I thought, If I can't be honest now, when will it happen? It was so hard to step away from the [protection of] fiction, but I'm ready to talk start telling their truth.

Know yourself and go in swinging, if it hurts when you hit, it might be real, too.

You have to be willing to expose yourself, at least to yourself, to get to some kind of truth about a character.

How much more can you give? Other than, literally, open-heart surgery onstage? Not much. But the only cure you have right now is the honesty of going, this is who you are. I know who I am.

Just speak your truth, it's an important cornerstone of how your life ends up sort of unfolding in front of you. Even if it's painful, if it's honest, it's going to bring you to the place you deserve to be.

To dance at all is to confront oneself. It is the art of honesty.

Self-awareness involves deep personal honesty. It comes from asking and answering hard questions.