Johnny B. Truant Quotes & Sayings

Do the idiotic. Follow your heart. Try the impossible. Do something crazy. — Johnny B. Truant

To be epic, all I'd need to do is to do epic shit. — Johnny B. Truant

You'd think we're never going to die, the way we cower and second-guess and fret over each little action. — Johnny B. Truant

so entering a conversation that you'd overheard but hadn't been invited to join was sort of like peeing in someone's coffee while they stood there and watched you do it. — Johnny B. Truant

You are that beetle on the streets of New York. The universe doesn't hate you, but it doesn't love you, either. You're just an atom in its infinite workings. The universe doesn't care if you live, die, suffer, or thrive. Only YOU care. — Johnny B. Truant

Stop waiting for someone to give you what you want. The universe is too busy to care. It has worlds to create and galaxies to destroy. If you're worried about death and about your own end, don't. It's coming whether you like it or not. You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE. There is only now. If you have power, it's now. If you can change anything, you have to do it now. If you want to be or to have that next great thing, be it. Have it. Take it. Own it. Do it. Become it. Be awesome. Do epic shit. Do it now. The clock is ticking. — Johnny B. Truant

If tomorrow, ninety percent of the world's population started scooting around on its collective asses while wearing dead raccoons as hats, people who walked on two feet and were visibly raccoonless would be called "weird. — Johnny B. Truant

Why do we look to everyone else to see what to do? Why don't we understand that they're all as lost and scared as we are? Why do we look at a random consensus, shaped by opinions and powers that drift like dunes, as an absolute truth? If "normal" could change tomorrow, why are we such slaves to it? And where has "normal" gotten us, anyway? We live in a society that can't stop pollution or environmental destruction, that can't raise educational standards, can't stay healthy and non-obese, can't balance a budget, has no sense of fiscal responsibility, is in an economic tailspin, and is rife with crime and murder and violence. Most people in this "normal" society of ours begin sitting still in a room for six to eight hours beginning in childhood. They continue that for twelve years and then begin sitting still in a different room for another forty years, at which point they hope to retire and sit still in a chair in front of the TV until they die. — Johnny B. Truant

Success" means nothing more than playing a certain game well enough to receive whatever high accolades exist within that game. — Johnny B. Truant

found myself working hard for mediocre pay and mediocre rewards, doing mediocre work that bored me but that I felt I shouldn't complain about. — Johnny B. Truant

Mindless conformity is what turns us from humans into sheep. — Johnny B. Truant

I wanted a different kind of success. Freedom. Happiness. And yes, some money to make the way a bit more interesting. Different rewards, different game. Meaning I'd have to play by different rules -- applying different stimuli in order to receive a different response. — Johnny B. Truant

In my past, there's also an opportunity I could have taken advantage of that I didn't, and that I wish I had. There's a thing I got rid of that I really wish I'd kept. But the train never backs up. Never. I missed those things, and I will never get a second chance. Do yourself a favor, right now, and realize two things: 1. You will keep getting older, and then you will die. 2. Everything that's ever entered your experience has lasted and will continue to last for only a brief moment in the life of the universe. This is game time, champ. You're in. You're in, playing, right now, and the clock is ticking. So stop wondering what it all means and how you'll possibly ever do X and what people will think, and get on with your life already. Stop being a pussy and go do something amazing. *** DO EPIC SHIT. — Johnny B. Truant

We found a cure for pain. — Johnny B. Truant

Maurice laid down all of his cards, then said, Gin. Reginald looked up into Maurice's face and said, I thought we were playing poker and Maurice replied, That's your problem. — Johnny B. Truant

One day, if I'm very lucky, I'll be a shriveled 100-year old guy with a cane. An old man with a kid's mind, wondering how the hell this could have happened. — Johnny B. Truant

you're going to find most of the rules we have really do make sense. Don't murder. Don't steal. Don't rape. Don't beat people up. Don't be an insufferable asshole. But if you're similarly rational, you're going to realize that some of the rules and norms don't feel as black and white to you. A few that I decided didn't jibe: Everyone must be insured, so pay $1200 per month for it. Tattoos are for wackos and frat boys. Never renege on a past choice that is ruining your life. — Johnny B. Truant

I'm not an anarchist. I'm glad there are laws in place that will prevent people from killing me and taking all of my stuff. I think our society needs order. It needs structure. But it's wrong to assume that every guideline that rises out of a structured society is right for every person in it. I wouldn't choose to break many laws, but I would and do choose to not buy into a lot of this world's bullshit. — Johnny B. Truant

It was always easier to maintain strength for others than to face the demons inside. That's probably why Cameron, on his band's tours through so many borderline places later in life, had always made room for charity. Helping others fostered a sense of control. It made a person feel that some day, he might find the strength to help himself. — Johnny B. Truant

Used to be, things were different. — Johnny B. Truant

Rules, guidelines, and even laws are someone's opinion about how things should be done. Nothing more. — Johnny B. Truant

Why... it means everything. It means that in the small amount of time you have to live, you can be whatever you want. It means that even though the universe doesn't care enough to give you what you want, it doesn't care enough to stop you from having it, either. So embrace that anarchy, and take those things for yourself. — Johnny B. Truant

I'm considered a health nut amongst vampires. I usually feed only on vegetarians. — Johnny B. Truant

It's ironic. Letting yourself experience what you most don't want to experience is the only way to truly be human. *** — Johnny B. Truant

Maybe there's a grand conductor, and maybe there's not. I do happen to believe in God, or the Spirit of Life, or the Force for all I know, but regardless of belief or disbelief, one thing I know for certain is that no matter WHAT or WHO is out there, he or it doesn't "care" if you define "care" in terms of life and death. Nobody is special. Nobody gets a pass. — Johnny B. Truant

We're not the fragile beings we've been trained to think we are. We're not as weak (of body, of mind, of will) as we've hypnotized ourselves into thinking. — Johnny B. Truant

Realize that time will never stop. NEVER. You will never be younger again. It's like being on a train with no stops that's always leading you farther and farther from home... or closer and closer to home, depending on how you look at it. You can never get off that train. You can never board a train going the opposite direction. If you missed a stop, tough shit. — Johnny B. Truant

The sun rose. Flowers bloomed. People even continued to talk to me as if I weren't a complete failure, as if they didn't know or possibly -- unthinkably -- didn't care. Life went on. I think that's when I realized that it's all bullshit. — Johnny B. Truant

you knew how small you are and how short a time you have to do what you can, you wouldn't waste time watching five fucking hours of TV a day. You wouldn't waste time doing a job you hate. You wouldn't waste the little time you have dealing with assholes, feeling sorry for yourself, or being timid about the things you'd really like to do. — Johnny B. Truant

We used to fuck with our Catholic roommate during Lent, trying to determine exactly how specific God's opinion was about that one. What if you ate something that you didn't know contained meat? What if you were driving east at 11:30pm and unknowingly crossed into a new time zone right before biting into a cheeseburger? During an airline flight, did God go by departure time, arrival time, or local time when determining the Hell- or Heavenbound nature of your meals? "What if you're a butcher," I remember saying, "and you're slicing up a side of beef on Friday when a stray bit of flesh becomes airborne and lodges itself in your throat. You begin to choke. You can't cough it up, but you could swallow it and save your life. What then, when your life is at stake?" Ridiculous? Sacrilegious? — Johnny B. Truant

Used to be, we were afraid of being eaten by tigers. That was a legit fear. You get eaten by a tiger just one time, and things change dramatically for you. — Johnny B. Truant

You are here now. Eventually, you will be gone. You have but a nanosecond on the universal clock to do whatever it is you're going to do. When that time is gone, it's gone. Forever. That — Johnny B. Truant

You're not just looking up into a curtain of black. You're looking into the eye of the universe. Stare for a while and you start to realize -- on a deep, gut level -- that the moon is a giant rock circling us in space. The sun is a violent, fusion-fueled ball of plasma and gas millions of miles away that destroyed the atmospheres of all of the inner planets (including Mars, which is farther away from it than we are) and would do the same to ours if we weren't lucky enough to have a magnetic field that diverts the solar wind. The cute little pinpricks of light you see out there are other giant, explosive, incredibly pissed-off balls of gas floating in an infinite void, most of which are far more impressive than our puny sun. And that smear of milky white through the sky? That's the center of our own galaxy -- a gigantic pinwheel circling a supermassive black hole like floating detritus around the vortex of a flushing toilet. — Johnny B. Truant

The cute little pinpricks of light you see out there are other giant, explosive, incredibly pissed-off balls of gas floating in an infinite void, most of which are far more impressive than our puny sun. — Johnny B. Truant

Once, I was a kid and everyone else was old. The tables will turn. I'll be the guy that kids look at and see as old. Me. Fucking ME. Me, who was once out cruising on Friday nights, staying up until dawn. Me, who thought I was indestructible, who thought I was forever. Turns out I was wrong. Turns out I was just one in 6.8 billion, and very much subject to the same laws of time and space as everyone else. — Johnny B. Truant

What if you kill a man who was plotting to shoot up a McDonald's? What if you commit one murder to prevent a dozen murders? The "obviously correct" judgment of the law starts to sound more and more like an opinion when a new variable is introduced, doesn't it? And okay, these "what if this?" exercises may feel like cerebral game play, but you don't even need to look to extreme examples to see the tenuous, opinion-based nature of laws. Abortion. Gay marriage. Determining fair use in a copyright infringement case. Every time a law is applied, it is applied as a matter of opinion. And those are the laws -- the biggest and baddest rules we have. — Johnny B. Truant

Dicky was intelligent but he ended up selling tea because he was socially retarded. — Johnny B. Truant

the poorest among us ended up being the fattest. — Johnny B. Truant

think about the littler rules. Club rules. Social standards. Values. "The way things are normally done." Opinions, every one. Yet we live our lives as if they're immutable truths. — Johnny B. Truant

You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE. — Johnny B. Truant

but what if science in this world has managed a way to actualize dreams? So if someone can dream something, they can manifest that into reality. — Johnny B. Truant

The way to expand your joy is by expanding your capacity for discomfort and failure. — Johnny B. Truant

Being a good and reasonable person in a good and reasonable and awesome life has nothing to do with following rules. It has to do with assessing rules, and guidelines, and norms, and prejudices, and ways of doing things, and established procedures, and prerequisites, and prejudices, and suppositions, and paradigms, and doing what the Oracle in The Matrix advised one do in the absence of proof or instructions: To make up your own damn mind. — Johnny B. Truant

There's a drinking game in Heaven, where angels do a shot every time humans invest "for the long term. — Johnny B. Truant

in the small amount of time you have to live, you can be whatever you want. It means that even though the universe doesn't care enough to give you what you want, it doesn't care enough to stop you from having it, either. — Johnny B. Truant