Henry Rollins Quotes (71 Quotes)


    It is no surprise to me that hardly anyone tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep themselves to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer than close to them It's so painful to be next to someone you feel strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to.

    Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.

    Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.

    Since the last tour I have done a lot of extensive travel to Iraq, Kuwait, Siberia, South Korea and other places and picked up some hopefully interesting stories. We are living in interesting times and as bad as things are, I draw considerable inspiration from some of the things I'm seeing and people I'm meeting. I'm looking forward to getting out on the road and talking about it all.

    There are so many hammocks to catch you if you fall, so many laws to keep you from experience. All these cities I have been in the last few weeks make me fully understand the cozy, stifling state in which most people pass through life. I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don't want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case. I will turn and say to them It is you who are the basket case. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn't even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun The air talks to me I am at all times And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup.


    Life will not break your heart. It'll crush it.

    I just get things done instead of talking about getting them done. I don't go out and party. I don't smoke, drink or do drugs and I'm not married, that leaves a lot of time for my work.

    I need to do things on my own, need to be left alone.

    I mean I appreciate fan mail and that the people like what I am doing but I can't answer it. If I would answer 25 letters a day I would be just a guy answering mail and not an artist anymore.

    I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.

    Nothing brings people together more, then mutual hatred.

    So I'm more at home with my backpack, sleeping in a hotel room or on a bus or on an airplane, than I am necessarily on a bed. It's weird being here. It feels like I'm standing next to my real life.

    I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.

    This is my 25th year of being on stage. A lot of people who I kind of toed up to the starting line with are no longer in this position. I feel very, very lucky.

    I touch her hair. Her shoulders clench together and she stares at the ground. She looks like a stone bird. I am an iceberg. Everyday I float farther and farther out to sea. But that can't be. An iceberg feels no pain. An iceberg doesn't feel cold. I feel cold. I feel distant. There is no one. There is nothing. That's where I am. She won't look me in the eye anymore since I asked if I could kiss her. Even wanting turns her cold.

    I can't remember that I ever had just a minute of stage fright.

    Well, we run my ship differently. Any offer that comes in, I yay or nay it, no matter how insane it is. Like, if someone asks me if I'm interested in doing a porn film, the answer to that is going to be no, but it comes to me anyway. I'm responsible for making the call.

    To hate is to show you still care, who needs that, focus on what's really important.

    I feel pain everyday of my life. When you see me perform, it's that pain you're seeing coming out. I put all my emotions, all my feelings, and my body on the line. People hurt me, I hurt myself mentally, physically.

    I've always seen it as the role of an artist to drag his inside out, give the audience all you've got. Writers, actors, singers, all good artists do the same. It isn't supposed to be easy.

    I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter - it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.

    Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.

    Keep your blood clean, your body lean, and your mind sharp.

    They say true love only comes around once and you have to hold out and be strong until then. I have been waiting. I have been searching. I am a man under the moon, walking the streets of earth until dawn. There's got to be someone for me. It's not too much to ask. Just someone to be with. Someone to love. Someone to give everything to. Someone.

    I want to change things for the better, just like everybody else.

    I forged myself out of a vacuum. I crawl along the highway on hacked off stumps year after year. Some wonder how and why. I never do.

    Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Because trying to impress people just isn't worth the time and effort.

    It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.

    The average is the borderline that keeps meremen in their place. Those who step over the line are heroes by the veryact. Go.

    Please tell your government and everyone in your office to go f themselves.

    If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.

    The whitest white dipped in clinging dirt. Another summer has thrown its corpse on my floor. The streets have given birth to even more strangers. Rivers of urine stripe the sidewalks. It rained the other day and the only thing that occurred to me was it would wash the smell away for a few days. Tonight is the first hot night. Outside my window, the human noise factor is intense. Its past midnight. They talk too much. They scream liquor-fueled idiot chatter. I pull away and close the door. I think about how its all going to play out. How much time people spend trying to get across to each other, trying to clear their names. Trying to overturn the charges brought against them. I have decided to tell them that its all true and not seek a fair trial. Its the only way to be free. Stop trying to matter. I could get my body tattooed with air-colored ink and walk invisibly amongst them. I have heard people say that they felt closer to their parents after they have died. Maybe if I treat people as if they were dead, I could get along with them better. I want to be able to like living people somehow. As it is now, theyre I best coming through speakers or trapped between book covers. Here I go into the heat. Four months as a human anvil.

    When was the last time you wanted to say it all to the right person To have it all come out right, to surprise yourself at how together you could be. When was the last time you ever met someone who made you want to give it all to them I mean give yourself to them. Where you couldn't express yourself enough - like you wanted to cut off one of your arms to be understood. That's it - you would cut your head off to have someone understand you. You know how pointless that one is. You know how many times you've smashed yourself to bits on the rocks.


    It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself.

    I can only write about personal stuff, about my point of view.

    Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated.


    Giving a good performance, giving it all is what it's all about. I love to perform.

    It's hard to get along with people. As much as you try to like them and accept them as individuals, it becomes difficult because they keep getting out of line and wasting your time.

    Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.

    Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong, and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't come back. You're left so alone that you can't explain.

    I don't want to know. I don't need it. I don't want the information that millions of people have. I don't want to be fed these boring facts and figures. Then you'll become one of the masses. I'd rather starve my mind a bit and have to search out nutrition in stranger places.

    As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me.

    Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good.

    I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.

    Somewhere someone is thinking of you. Someone is calling you an angel. This person is using celestial colors to paint your image. Someone is making you into a vision so beautiful that it can only live in the mind. Someone is thinking of the way your breath escapes your lips when you are touched. How your eyes close and your jaw tightens with concentration as you give pleasure a home. These thoughts are saving a life somewhere right now. In some airless apartment on a dark, urine stained, whore lined street, someone is calling out to you silently and you are answering without even being there. So crystalline. So pure. Such life saving power when you smile. You will never know how you have cauterized my wounds. So sad that we will never touch. How it hurts me to know that I will never be able to give you everything I have.

    I am ready for whatever's coming. I expect nothing but to be let down or turned away. I am alone. Goddamn. The shit hurts sometimes, but I realize what I am, what I have become. The alien man waved his arms up and down and noticed that he couldn't wave in the right language so he stopped.


    I want to meet a woman that will make me stop and listen to what she has to say. I want a woman who will make my jaw drop in awe. A woman that has little time for me. One who does not throw herself at me. One who respects herself who has a sense of herself. Where is she


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