Helen Garner Quotes

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.

I'm not a terrible person, I know that, but sometimes in a relationship, I can be crappy.

I think as an actor you have to be open to your emotions - that's how you tap into other characters. Besides, by being so open I've come to terms with how screwed I am!

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

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?

The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives.

If you want to end your isolation, you must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it.

It's important to air your concerns and fears with someone you trust. When you're honest about how you can change and grow, and where your weaknesses are, then you open the door for improvement and change.

The price of confessing is to be confronted with the truth of who you are - you have to bear your faults, your frailties.

I have trouble admitting I'm wrong.

I tend to find you have to be fairly vulnerable to get something... to get a perspective worth having. Which can be controversial. But I find telling someone what you're thinking about, what you want, and what you're afraid of can often help them give guidance.

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.

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

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.

I don't expect anyone to believe I will change, but I'm working on it.

I try as hard as I can to write from a personal place and be genuine.

Sometimes I feel drawn to writing about my shortcomings because I'm chock full of them.

I felt like a failure for so long because I wasn't able to access myself in the way I knew I would have if I was going to make music that mattered. I knew I was going to have to learn how to be honest.

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

Women will sometimes confess their sins, but I never knew one to confess her faults.

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.

It's a funny thing about weaknesses....Most people will tell you they know their weaknesses. When asked, they'll tell you, 'Well for one thing, I'm overgenerous.' ... that's what innkeepers are for.

The confession of one man humbles all.

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 am learning that the best cure for hypocrisy is community. Hypocrisy is not so much the result of not living what I preach but much more of not confessing my inability to fully live up to my own words.