Quotes by Henry Rollins

Love heals scars love left.

I don't have talent, so I just get up earlier.

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

Texas is as odd as it is vast.

Strength is the product of struggle. You must do what others don't to achieve what others won't.

We occupy the planet with a vengeance. We seek to dominate it.

What goes best with a cup of coffee? Another cup.

If an American company has a drop of patriotic blood coursing through its system, then surely it would set up in America and employ Americans, right?

A man came up to me the other day and said he hadn't had a bite in weeks. So you know what I did? I walked by him like he didn't even exist.

The average is the borderline that keeps mere men in their place. Those who step over the line are heroes by the very act. Go.

The rich survive and everyone else gets ready to work 2 1 2 to 3 1 2 jobs and what do you get? Blade Runner. Welcome to your science fiction. Your 21st century. I think that's where it goes. The rich get richer and everyone else... the middle class kind of starts dropping lower and lower.

If you really want a true confrontation, you treat your opponent with respect.

An adult has the opportunity to enjoy the wisdom gleaned from previous decades of living and experience.

I'm not a conservative or a republican but I know that there's conservative republicans who I probably vigorously disagree with but I also am smart enough, or something enough, to understand that they really think that they're right, and they're looking at me like I'm crazy.

When you're little and you don't have much dough, you have to innovate. You have to be sharp.

For myself, I can't understand a life without a job. I don't know what I would do without employment. Retirement is out of the question for me.

I have no pride about anything I have done. It's just not the way I think about things. I do the work, always, as hard as I can, to the point of pain, injury, exhaustion, if that is what it takes. Once I am done, I move on.

Break from self rejection, try some introspection.

When life hands you a lemon, say, 'Oh yeah, I like lemons! What else ya got?'

I don't really write for fun; it's not an enjoyable experience. For me, art, or whatever the hell it is I do, has always been a refuge from that which makes me want to tear my lungs out. That's why I play like I play; I'm not into entertainment.

For me the music is not so much anger as much as it is of passion. And I've always associated that kind of intense emotional output with music just because the nature of the music that's attracted me as far as live.

Humans will take a rain forest and lose it and cover it with concrete. They will take the woods and turn it into a parking garage and I am not saying that's bad. I am just saying that's what we do. We occupy the planet with a vengeance. We seek to dominate it.

When I was a kid looking at pictures of the Sphynx, and the Pyramids, and different tribes in Africa, all of that stuck with me, and I always wanted to see those things and meet those people.

Retirement in another country is your body is too racked with pain and your hands are too arthritic from the life in the rice patty fields, so you can't work anymore.

I can't imagine being sixty years of age and playing music I wrote when I was in my twenties. I would rather sail the sea of consequence to new lands. Laps around the shallow end of the pool, not for me.

I lack the skill to hold a story line for the length required for a novel or even a short story. I have never had an idea that could withstand a hundred thousand words, or even ten thousand words of rubber meeting the road.

Shirley Sherrod seems like a good and dedicated person.

I remain hopeful that science, innovation and kindness will come to the fore as things become more and more tense in parts of the world. I think what you are seeing in the world right now is kind of a leveling or an attempt to level the playing field.

I think to myself:
I don't want to survive this one
I want to burn up in the wreckage.

I'm not trying to say I'm a big tough guy... I'm a typical American-waist deep in this violent culture.

I don't consider myself an actor, for me it's employment. Like the actor who's a waiter a lot, I'm an actor when I'm not on tour, in that that's a job I can do.

I believe in North, South, East, West, The seasons, life and death, geography. That which is provable, absolute and most of all, functional. I believe in things that can kill me.

You don't make me feel like you used to.
That's why I'm leaving
That's why people leave each other
They come to their senses and get selfish again.

Misery, depression, elation all mine, refine confinement all my design.

I do think that Americans are poorly served by their media, at times extremely poorly served by their elected officials who are non responsive to majority feelings and cut off to a certain degree from the affairs of the world.

I am a pretty crazy person, so it's best for me to be on my own most of the time.

You can find me in the frozen mood section.

I think that Goldman Sachs and the Pentagon determine more of America's outcome then any president or any congress, that sounds a bit cynical, but I think I am right.

I think that America certainly has racism, I think that any industrialized country does. But when you see how many million fans Barack Obama has who are not black, it would lead one to the conclusion that millions of Americans are in fact not burdened by the albatross of racism.

Always knowing you're going to die And until then knowing you've got to live.

What I've found is that a lot of soldiers are surprisingly apolitical. Their reality is, Today I'm going to leave the gate for twelve hours, and I'm going to make it back to the dining facility by sundown with the arms and legs of me and my buddies intact.

I continually remind myself to live by a code. It's very important to me. I've got a bad temper.

The best revenge is to always survive yourself.

My desires are foolish. The things I want are better kept to myself. The hand of silence is steady. The hard blade of silence is clean like night. The code is absolute. Silence is eternal and patient. Silence never makes a fool of itself like I have so many times.

Is it a shame that I can't accept love? Am I too burned out to move towards what will keep me alive or too smart to get pulled into someone else's world?

I'm so burned out, the only person I can stand is myself. I'm the only one I would put through this. Wheels and wings, The ride is everything. I'm all I've got. I'm all I can take. Another day has destroyed a part of me. So far so good.

The destructive power of a lie is stronger than the truth.

For me, speaking to anyone -- on a stage, in an elevator -- I am looking for impact and connection. The same goes for writing.

I don't have a wife, I don't have any kids, I don't have any addictions that keep me drooling on the couch, and I'm kind of target oriented.

When I write lyrics, it's only when I'm angry or hurt or sad. So lyrically it's never really easy going. And the music is always really intense.

I listen to blues music a lot and that's a good person feeling bad and celebrating that pain by releasing it in that kind of joyous fashion.

When the Iron doesn't want to come off the mat, it's the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn't teach you anything.

When you start thinking as far as what's a good photo, unfortunately everything starts looking like a good photo.

Hating someone is giving them too much, just leave them alone.

I don't hate people -- not remotely other than they make you crazy in traffic, but as I get older I kind of see more and more why people do what they do.

Life forgets me but will not let me forget Holds me down and tells me that I'm free.

After... The seas have dried out The trains have come to a shrieking holt The hounds of the abyss cease to howl The prisons have closed their doors The pigs have no one to arrest except themselves The drugs no longer have an effect When it's all over All I'll remember is you.

If I was gay, there would be no closet. You would never see the closet I came out of. Why? Because I'd have burned it for kindling by the time I was twelve... If I was gay, at this stage of the game?age 37, aging alternative icon?I'd be taking out ads.

The talking shows allow me to come out of my cave and that's why those shows go on for so long. I hate walking off stage. Sometimes I walk off and I miss them as I'm walking off the stage. I wonder if they'll let me go another hour. That's why I do it: to communicate, to get points across.

If i was a woman these days, i'd be killing motherfuckers. my handgun would never cool and my hands would be covered in testicular blood. i would have a horrible reputation with a lot of men because i would be calling them on their weak bullshit left and right.

I live my life by the numbers. Not only am I an American, I am an Americanist.

I don't really have any women in my life, actually those two -- the women in my life are two married women who work at my office.

All I have is me. Over-worked, under-appreciated, middle-aged, and shriveled up.

I spend a lot of time alone so I get a lot done. I don't do much else but work, check things out.

I do a lot of stuff for free anyway. Like a lot of people who you see who don't need money. Mick Jagger -- he needs money? He just likes to go sing Satisfaction every night. If I wrote that song I probably would do it too.

I am always interested in an opportunity to learn something.

While I have not ruled out the possibility of doing music, what I don't want to do is go onstage and perform old songs. I do, all the time, but I don't think it is artistically brave.

Don't push me I've got a corner at my back I've nowhere to go except over you.

There's a lot of stuff like that that American's don't know and since a lot of Americans don't have a passport, I'll get a passport for them and since a lot of Americans don't know what a war looks like thirty, forty years later and it's still doing damage.

From those who agonize that they may no longer be able to write off their private jet to someone who doesn't feel like making the three mile hike to the well to get water and carry it back, everyone struggles.

Pride is not a word or sentiment I can ascribe to anything I have done or do. As far as regret, it is a luxury I can not afford. Anything I did, that was bad or wrong or regretful, I stand accused, I am guilty and I'm ready to serve my time.

Americans are poorly served by their media, you know, for the war machine and propaganda machine and the global empire and they're poorly served by what they are being told is representative government.

There's nothing funny about, 'Yeah, I took a First Class plane ticket and I went to some designer beach and made out with a Laotian slave girl.' Who cares?

Half of life is up -- the other half is dealing with it.

Too sick and freaked out not to want a bullet for every passer by, too sick and freaked out to breathe, too sick and freaked out to care, too sick and freaked out to think of anything but the annihilation of my mind and denial of my life. So sick and freaked out that I think everyone is my friend.

In America, quite often, for people from a certain economic position two choices become very evident as to their adult life. One is crime, one is the military. And it is quite often that some people choose one or the other, their options not being as many as someone from a higher income.

I'm not a thrill seeker. I'm not looking to get kidnapped. I'm not looking to get a shot at. I've been shot at. I didn't like it.

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.

I think it's very sad that the political landscape is so dotted with religious extremists who feel the need to infringe upon the lives of decent, free and harmless Americans who want nothing more than to be in love and to spend the rest of their lives together.

I was raised in Washington, DC, very violent place. I grew up with violence. My introduction to music was violent. The years I've spent on tours, some of that was extremely violent.

When you're very young, images that you upload into your very young mind tend to stay with you.

The visceral nature of hard rock music, the fact that you can have this sledge hammering sound -- and that you can hook a lyric up and a feeling up to something and make the lyric jump into this machine that crushes. That has always been really attractive to me, that kind of power.

Here you can be a billionaire, like Mark Zuckerberg rich, but you are going to die and you are here for a while and ultimately all of your stuff is kind of like a rental.

As the middle class is predated upon with an ever greater malicious intensity, their children stand to lose more and harder than their parents ever did.

I am well protected Too locked up Inside myself To get free.

When you see the Escalades and the Hummers driving down the street, at least in Los Angeles, this dry, flat desert with shopping malls, when you see someone driving one of those through this you're like, 'You are definitely part of the problem.'

But can a song stop a war? If Bob Marley and Bob Dylan couldn't do it, it can't be done.

If I could go to Kabul and not die, I would go back to Afghanistan as soon as I could. And, that was the most interesting place that I've been to.

You are the untold story. You are the impassioned truth wanting to scream its existence, to be forever trapped by a strong hand clapped firmly over the mouth of my soul.

Once you say something, it stays said. I apologized to anyone who may have been hurt by what I said, and I really meant it. I am absolutely not interested in hurting anyone, or being mean or insensitive.

No time for drug addiction, no time for smoke or booze. Too strong for a shortened life span, I've got no time to lose.

I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.

The government is a functionary of the corporations -- and there's nothing new about that. You can find people in the 1930s talking about the army basically working for Wall Street in all of these countries it invades.

How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to re-live them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold-plating thinly coated over lead, chalk and peeling paint.

In the worst of times the best among us never lose their moral compass, and that is how they emerge relatively unscathed.

Books are cool, but knowledge without mileage doesn't mean anything to me.

We're just very belligerent, and I'm not trying to put Americans down, by and large I think we're nice people, but we operate with the information we're given and we are limited by the ignorance that is kind of injected into the media and into the TV shows.

I live my life through the prism of capitalism and physiological limits and eventualities.

Will punk rock ever die? Pal, if you have to ask it's dead to you.

I have watched independent record stores evaporate all over America and Europe. That's why I go into as many as I can and buy records whenever possible. If we lose the independent record store, we lose big. Every time you buy your records at one of these places, it's a blow to the empire.

I'm usually busy -- if you call me at the house, I get about four phone calls there a year -- I'm usually running around the house with a pen in my mouth holding onto something, folding it, or doing something to it, and it's always a bad time.

I never think of what it's going to be like later. I only think in the present tense. The only time I think backwards is when I have to reissue something.

Don't hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you're against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet 'H' on your shirt, and say, 'I am a homophobe!'

Love is self deception. I am a living creature. Hate is only self love. I am a double feature.

No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as down time. All you got is life time. Go.

Desperation is the secret to my steady employment. I am not interested in downtime. I really like to keep working all the time and I always feel like I'm in the mail room of life; working up.

Whenever I write lyrics, in the back of my mind I always see a guy driving to work, driving to a really bad job, one of those horrible institutions, or one of those low squat buildings in Los Angeles. I write with that person in my mind.

Capitalism does what it does and money doesn't belong to anybody. It just stays in someone's wallet for a while, then it goes somewhere else. It always goes somewhere and it is always about to go somewhere.

Life is death in slow motion.

Republicans just can't help themselves. They get in front of a live microphone and within a few sentences are rocketing down the swiftest and most direct route to the all-you-can-eat comedian-and-talk-show-host buffet.

Your commander would never lie to you. That's the vice president's job.

Black Sabbath -- one of the world's universal language of music. I felt proud, for three or four minutes of my life combining my voice with Tony Iommi's guitar sound.

I think there is something very interesting about people who live day to day in an environment where they could get taken out by a wild animal. There has to be some kind respect that is derived from that relationship.

Thank you for touching me. Some of the only moments worth living were spent with you. Not you especially, the collective you.

If you hate your parents, the man or the establishment, don't show them up by getting wasted and wrapping your car around a tree. If you really want to rebel against your parents, out-learn them, outlive them, and know more than they do.

I think I am the most impressed with writing styles that defy category, like Kharms or Selby, Breton or Jarry, where you become as interested in the writer as much as the writing itself. It's all these things that make reading so appealing to me.

I travel because I want to know. Books and documentaries will only get you so far. If you want to know, you will have to go.

I like people. Rightwingers don't. They like business, they don't care about people. I like education, they seem not to care much about it.

For some there is no music
No lights
No fire
No untamed madness that breathes life
There is work
Anguish
Frustration
Rage
Despair
A dullness that rings like wooden thunder.

Here in this moment we are beautiful, nocturnal creatures and our thoughts and words are jewels guarded by the moon.

The fact is that I am always thinking of something to build. A new book, radio show, plans for a trip somewhere. I am not a very happy person but I feel pretty even when I am working, so I guess that is how I am wired.

I'd rather work on my radio show, which no one hears but I put about eight hours of programming and writing into it for those 30 people who do tune in.

In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks.

When Black Flag and DOA and all those bands were touring in the early 80s, it was kind of a forest and you just kind of got your way through it. Now it's like a six lane highway with Starbucks every twenty meters. That's just civilization.

In fact, every place I've been to in Africa has a nice part, but you see the downside. Calcutta , parts of Central and South America , I've seen a lot of dead bodies and a lot of sad poverty and just obliteration.

I could fall in love with a cruel desert that kills without passion, a canyon full of scorpions, one thousand blinding arctic storms, a century sealed in a cave, a river of molten salt flowing down my throat. But never with you.

Friends come and go but 200lbs is always 200lbs.

The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found.

I prefer to work out alone. It enables me to concentrate on the lessons that the Iron has for me.

My fear is naked, I'm naked and fearless, And my fear is naked.

It's always been impressive to me when someone can really do what they want onstage. The audience has confidence in the performer and the performer has confidence in the crowd.

Horror jolts me when I look at one of you and see a pair of beautiful eyes that make me think your mind might contain a world that could hold me as the bolts shake loose and fly from my frame.

If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don't say you're worried about what they will do to the Afghan people. If that was America's concern, America's operational presence there would be much different.

I can tell you exactly where the economy is going. It's going to China, Honduras, Guatemala, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cipan, and any other place where you can pay people peanuts and have them work like dogs.

In the city of Pyongyang, you don't have to look very far to see an image of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung. They love the guy. He is responsible for the wonder that is North Korea.

Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my mind.

There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and body have been awakened to their true potential, it's impossible to turn back.

I've enjoyed, to a certain extent, any country I've been in, of course like Serbia and Croatia can be very restrictive and oppressive, and frustrating, but they're still very beautiful.

That's where the economy is going. It went somewhere. Just not to America. And the money made? That went to the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. Not back here. Never to be taxed.

Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul.

Youth is fleeting and life is short, you might as well strike hard. Anything else is just average.

I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don't already know, and make me laugh. I don't care what you look like, just turn me on.

I see walking bombs on the street
Hearts not beating, but ticking.

Sitting in a room, alone, listening to a CD is to be lonely. Sitting in a room alone with an LP crackling away, or sitting next to the turntable listening to a song at a time via 7-inch single is enjoying the sublime state of solitude.

I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do. I love you more than I hate my loneliness and pain.

I definitely learned a lesson this time. I know that I can be broken. I am not as tough as I thought. I see it now. At this point, it's the only thing good that came out of all of this. I know myself better now and know what I have to do.

Disappointment always arrives before hope and the darkness of night comes before the dawn. Don't lose hope now because things will brighter with the new day.

You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others.

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.

Sarah Palin embarrasses herself almost immediately upon opening her mouth to speak or upon moving her fingers to send messages to her dull flock.

Rush Limbaugh makes money getting simpleminded people to feel good about their intellectually undernourished brain spasms. He's very good at it, and I scarcely believe a fraction of what he says.

For me, returning to Los Angeles annihilates the memories of where I have just been with an astonishing speed.

I don't know how much you follow current events. For some, there's not enough time to keep up on what's happening; for others, the news is too depressing, and peering too deeply fills one with boiling frustration all too quickly.

I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was up early watching television and watched the announcement. I didn't understand what the word 'assassinated' meant.

Technically speaking, there is no music whatsoever on a CD. Lots of information, but no music.

To burn a CDR of music you like to give as a gift to someone you wish to become closer to is a cold, moist-palmed, mouth-breathing bummer.

To my ears, jazz sounds better in warm weather and after the sun has gone down. While I will listen to some of my favorite jazz records in cooler weather, it's the warmer nights that really make them come alive. Something about those sounds and the heat of the night really makes it happen for me.

Now and then, someone is able to look at an empty space, conclude it would be a great place to start a revolution, and bravely go forward.

I don't mind bees and think we are all the better for having them around. I like the taste of honey.

If I were a doctor, I would prescribe that you addict yourself deeply and irrevocably to music and never, ever seek cure outside of more music. It really is the best drug available.

It is only our humanity that can deliver us from the brutality of our achievements.

The Internet, the camera cellphone and the like have not only sped up the world's information uptake, but they have cheapened that which they capture.

I plan to be a part of Haiti's reconstruction and future.

Music files and downloading have indeed changed the currency of music to a great degree.

I get letters from young people telling me that they're broke and download my albums for free. They ask me what I think about that. I now have a standard line. I tell them, 'I would rather be heard than paid.'

For many, an album is no longer a considerable feat of an artist but just sounds to be half-listened to while one is halfheartedly engaged in something else.

I urge you to read the Occupy Manifesto, written by the New York City General Assembly. It is unavoidably clear. This is not directionless action. If it were, the media would have moved on.

People will remember that the Tea Party was co-opted and funded by billion-dollar corporations, and that it was supported by Fox News and other outlets with the same vigor with which they attempt to denigrate the Occupy protesters.

There are records that, in my opinion, only reach their full potential when the listener is disoriented.

Certainly, there are huge, multiplatinum bands whose singers command their audience's attention. Sadly, much of the time they have little to say.

Rock n' roll unchained a nation and revolutionized radio and the record industry, not to mention the motion picture business.

Songs sung under duress are often very powerful.

The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.