Jon Johansen Quotes

One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it's not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.

I was unwise enough to actually mention this in public a few times, and in fact to point out that there were two versions of the book now. One of them had somebody else's name on the cover, one had my name on the cover.

I did get a reputation for being choosy and not very easy to be approached, and none of that is true. It is not that I am not approachable, it is just that I am trying to find myself and establish who I am as an artist.

In the past, I have assumed the word 'vulnerability' equates with the word 'weakness' and 'This Is Us' shows us that it is in fact the opposite.

I am not someone who can be fooled by praise at all. In fact, I quickly sniff out people who are being fake with me. It doesn't go unnoticed with me.

I think a lot of people think I'm either unintelligent because I'm a very happy person and I have a lot of energy or that it's a fake happiness, like fake energy. I completely understand that because it's a lot to handle, and I am a very emotional human being.

Quite a few of The Rolling Stones records have had a great honesty about them. In fact, I would put them side-by-side with a 'Treasury of Folk Music' collection, containing all the prison songs, the farm and road-gang songs that were recorded on the spot in the Deep South.

If you try to guess what people are gonna think, you're chasing the wrong thing.

People assume that displaying your own personal ego on screen is called acting, which is actually not what acting is about.

I want to show people that I'm not what everybody thought I was.

I try and keep my pictures as natural as possible and try not to use too many filters, because now, it is such a world of making everything look so perfect, that in fact, it is the imperfections in people that are really unique and special. So, I try and get that across to people.

When you fail, things get real. In fact, they get real real. If your success was a high profile success, then your failure will be a high profile failure. Opportunities and 'friendships' will evaporate. Failure shines a bright light on all relationships. The ones that last are pure and true, which is a true gift.

Sometimes when you speak what's on your mind - I'm talking everything on your mind, and - people can get a misconception of you.

Being misunderstood is not a bad thing as an actor. I know the truth.

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

It’s a rare man who is taken for what he truly is.

When I've written for Bill Murray - I've written six films for him - people would read it and say, "Oh, that's so perfectly Bill." He'd read it and say, "Are you kidding? I can't say these words." So it's all about perception.

Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.

Generally, that's what happens-a fundamental rotting of the idea. They woke up with the wrong idea. It's just like music: If you don't have an innate love or calling for it, then no matter how much you study or how well you can play by looking at the score, it doesn't mean that you're going to make really good music.

I'm not doing my job if people are like, "What you do is fake." And literally people on the street are confused, generally, for the first time.

People think I'm really melancholy and romantic and all whispery. I'm not at all. I'm very direct.

I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.

You're so connected to people and they all know how to get to you, and everyone knows who you are, so explicitly. They think they know you. It's like, 'You really think you know me? I don't know me! How do you know I'm not different around someone else?

I'd rather be loud and misunderstood than quiet and bored