I am not interested in being original. I am interested in being true.

Chasing originality keeps your attention on yourself: how you look next to others, whether anyone has said it before. Truth turns your attention outward, to whether what you say or make matches how things are and what you actually believe. The quote suggests that a person who aims at truth may end up original anyway, because honest seeing tends to be a little different from borrowed opinion. Someone who aims only at novelty often ends up with a pose.

Agostinho da Silva, the Portuguese thinker who spent many years teaching in Brazil, is generally associated with a belief in freedom, simplicity and a kind of spiritual generosity, drawn partly from Portuguese popular and mystical traditions. That makes the sentiment fit him, though I can't point to a definitive source, so the wording may be a popular attribution. It also echoes an old philosophical idea that wisdom is something to be received and lived, not invented.

In practice, imagine you are writing a eulogy, a blog post, or a work presentation. Instead of searching for a clever angle, you ask what you actually observed and what you honestly think. You may use plain words and familiar structures, yet people will recognize something real in it.