Jennifer Weiner Quotes

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

If I was gonna write a book that was true, and I was gonna write a book that was honest, then I was gonna have to write about myself in very, very negative ways.

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 feel like I really tapped into a pretty honest emotional place for myself as a lyricist. There's a broad spectrum of emotions.

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

I have faced up to what I am.

I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.

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.

You've got to make a decision when you write about your life, and I decided I was going to be honest, and some of those things will be embarrassing.

The biggest thing that I hope people take away when they listen to my music is that they feel that there is an outlet being presented that allows them to be more authentic and for them to be more honest in their own lives.

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

I've never been a confessional writer.

Start telling the truth now and never stop. Begin by telling the truth to yourself about yourself. Then tell the truth to yourself about someone else. Then tell the truth about yourself to another. Then tell the truth about another to that other. Finally, tell the truth to everyone about everything. These are the Five Levels Of Truth Telling. This is the five-fold path to freedom.

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

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

Before I started writing my album, I didn't tell people many things. But because I'm going to the studio every day and telling strangers my deepest and darkest emotions, it's made me more of an open book. I wear my heart on my sleeve a lot more now than I did.

For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are "like" everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty.

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.

The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think.

The only problems I've ever had with being honest is telling people how I feel about them or saying how I feel about other people.

Nobody wants to rock their own life. But, on the other hand, when your life does get rocked, it affords you a certain level of emotional honesty. It liberates you to be who you really are.

I think I had a kind of pause for insight in my 20s when I wasn't in a relationship and my career wasn't going the way I wanted it to go. I had time for reflection then.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it's about the stories; it's about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people's privacy.

I'd rather tell you how I really feel.