Daniel Mendelsohn Quotes

Emotional honesty transcends reality; it's what allows disbelief to be suspended and yet what makes a story stay true.

A lot of people hate heroes. I was criticized for portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as sentimentality are cowards. They’re afraid to commit themselves, and so they remain ‘cool’ for the rest of their lives, until they’re dead—then they’re really cool.

Self-expression is my goal, I want to be real with my feelings. Singing and dancing and all the joy that goes with performing come from my heart. If I can't feel it, I won't do it.

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent.

It's just that I don't want to be somebody's crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don't want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it too.

If you emote in your performances, people feel connected to you as an emotional person, because that's how we communicate. That doesn't mean people know you. At a certain point, I think you have to just be your own self.

I think that the best way you can get honesty across in your music to connect and relate to people is to be motivated by personal emotions, stories and feelings.

I tend to lose myself in the moment. I’m not very good at holding back. I don’t know how to do this without feeling everything. My emotions are the tool I use to perform.

I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings.

All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.

I think I see the difference now, between loving someone from afar and loving someone up close. When you see them up close, you see the real them, but they also get to see the real you.

Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying – what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.

If there's a message, it's that the unlovable and unattractive parts of ourselves should be embraced. The only real currency between people is what happens when they're not cool. And I hope people feel OK about not being cool.

In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.

I use myself for each part. Naturally, it's my body, it's my soul, it's my feelings. That's the only way I know how to work. I couldn't pretend.

I think irony precludes really feeling deeply about anything. I just didn't want to be that kind of writer who found nothing that wasn't worth indictment. I admire Willa Cather so much because she was unafraid to have big feelings and put them on the page. I just want to be able to believe in things.

I like emotions, but I really don't like sentimentality, and I don't like when things break their spell.

I'm not afraid to use my personal experiences and put them into a song. I think that's when you get the best stuff anyway, when it's real emotion.

Why can't people just say they were moved? Why do they have to say it's sappy?

I'm wide open and raw emotionally to the crowd.

I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.

I feel what I feel. If I wanna cry, I'm gonna cry - regardless of who watches me.

I think it's easier to be cynical. I think the temptation, often, among writers is to write about anything other than real, true, deep feelings.

A lot of the work I've done has been about being very raw and open with your emotions.

I am not playing on stage. I am living the situation. I cannot cut emotions and sing. I never save myself.