Lydia Hearst Quotes

Anytime you work with materials that are deep parts of yourself, you feel revulsion at showing things about yourself that you don't want people to know.

You must take the risk to disclose yourself in order to become more real, more human. And even if the price is high.

What I've found - and the older I get, the more I understand this and stand behind it - is, my whole life has been an exploration of telling the truth. It's scary to be truthful, and it's scary to reveal yourself, and I'm very attracted to doing things that scare me.

It's always been a mantra to me, when making music or creating art, that you have to be vulnerable.

What we know matters, but who we are matters more. Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen. It requires us to dare greatly, to be vulnerable.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

Acting has always been a way for me to express myself, and show all my vulnerabilities and flaws through my characters.

It is scary to write - period - for me, but once you get past the idea that it's scary to write, I still can only be who I am. As a writer, my job, to me, is to expose myself - to really sort of dig in and find out who I am and then put it on the page.

There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space.

Anyone who wants to know who I am can just read my lyrics - I've always written about who I am.

Trusting your individual uniqueness challenges you to lay yourself open.

I try to find what is closest to me in the character. There's many sides to personality, but it's a matter of, do you entertain those specific areas of your personality, or are you afraid to entertain them?

In some ways it's taken me decades to come clean and make honest work - and still to this day, sometimes I find myself wanting to hide behind my work and deny the more biographical aspects.

Part of being an artist is being willing to be shocked, being willing to be surprised, being willing to be hurt.

I think that, for me, the great books like that, autobiographies, are great when the artists who write them throw caution to the wind and really put it out there as they saw it.

You're demonstrating your own skills in a vulnerable way when you draw.

I reveal all of myself. I bring all of myself to my roles. You only see me. You don't see anything else but me. That is who's there. They're manifestations of my own self.

I mean, my stand-up is very honest and exposing in this way. I probably carry that into everything I do.

I wear my heart on my sleeve, and whatever I was giving, it was just coming from my natural place at that time. And you know, some albums I've made, I look back and think they were great, and then some I look at, and I think that wasn't right at the time.

When you share something about your adolescence, it's a way to roll over and show your soft underbelly when it comes to talking about your past and the person that you once were.

Coming off 'Reflection,' what we really wanted to do was be more vulnerable.

'Blackheart' was the moment for me to really open up and let people into the world that is me.

I've never been a confessional writer.

The message of 'The Distance To Here' is no secret. It is a message of love and an invitation to myself and to those who want to come along to ask the big questions and not feel uncool doing it.

Ultimately, I think writing is a mixture of craft, inspiration, and being incredibly, courageously explorative with yourself - and being brutally honest, too.