Henry Rollins Quotes

One of the most insane environments I have ever spent time in is a gun range. There we are, all in a line, armed to the teeth, firing away.

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.

You can't right the wrongs because you'll never understand the cause and you'll be too busy dodging the effect.

When I'm off the road, and I can really control my diet down to the calorie, I juice seven days a week. Every afternoon, whatever I have at hand, beets, carrots, ginger, whatever. I juice, literally, every single day. And on the road, I try to find fresh juice wherever I can.

My mother taught me how to read very early on and at school I was ahead of everyone in class... Reading was always something that I liked because I could do it alone and I was alone a lot of the time with my mother working the hours she did. Books became my friends very early on.

In my many trips to South Africa, I have met and spoken to a lot of people there, and they all seem to find apartheid as repellent as you would.

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.

August used to be a sad month for me. As the days went on, the thought of school starting weighed heavily upon my young frame. That, coupled with the oppressive heat and humidity of my native Washington, D.C., only seemed to heighten the misery.

Texas is a hotbed of insanely good bands and musicians.

Whether I will be remembered at all, I really don't get to choose, unless I shoot someone famous. It's not really anything I have much control over.

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 wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.

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.

Could it be that violence is as much a part of the American identity as the Constitution, and a vital component to its economic stability?

The truth is an anti-war statement in itself.

I can die anytime I want. I wish I could do the same with life.

I have lived in public as a somewhat recognizable person since I was a teenager. Emails I answer end up posted on sites; pictures of me and someone I just met, taken by a cellphone, literally number in the thousands and are easily accessed.

To combat the confusion and depression that assault me when I come off the road in the middle of a tour, I seek the most oblivionated music possible. When it's the 'way out there' that I seek, I go right to my stash of amazing music from Japan.

It is instilled in thousands of American males from an early age that one of their requirements is to be able to both dish out and take a lot of pain. They are taught the rules of this road in gyms, rings, backyards and fields all over America.

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

Cynicism is only intellectual sloth.

I'd love to talk to Janeane Garafalo or Randi Rhodes or Stephanie Miller from Air America. I'm an Air American junkie; I listen to them every day.

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.

Don’t think about it. Do it. Don’t talk about it. Do it.

Sleep is for squares.

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.

When you title yourself, you immediately lend yourself to all kinds of pretension

Nelson Mandela will always be the face of South Africa. The traveler passing through the country will see Mandela's face almost everywhere he looks. Truly, the man is omnipresent.

Respect is not a one way street

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

I am an optimist because I want to change things for the better and I know that blood has to be spilled and disharmony and cruelty are necessary to do that.

The Bad Seeds are a band I will travel a great distance to see whenever possible.

I like how I write better than how I speak.

In Israel, there's a lot to learn from anyone, because to live there you've got to deal with the truth. Things happen real fast. Your day goes from cool to catastrophic in one second. Israelis know that the cafe you're in could blow up, or the shopping mall, and they rock that.

The scars will take me far, they always do.

I think Naomi Klein was very astute with her book 'Shock Doctrine.' We make money on disaster.

I have come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time to have too much pride in anything. Perhaps it's good to have a sense of duty, a jealous zeal to protect or improve, but pride ultimately is only that which stands vulnerable to offense and degradation.

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.

I think to write fiction, this is just how I see it, you have to have a powerful need/desire to connect. I can't. Wanting to and not being able to has lead to a lot of misery in my life.

I am primarily a loner. I don't go to clubs. I don't hang out with people. I don't know many people. It's just the way it ended up. It's not a sob story; it's fine for me.

Go without a coat when it's cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it's all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you're made of and what you're capable of. If you're never tested, you'll never define you character.

Musicians should not play music. Music should play musicians.

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.

I'm not a young man, and I can find intensity in a lot of different ways, sometimes without even raising my voice. When I was younger, it was all about how I need three extra sets of lungs to get enough wind to get out the thing at the screaming level I need to, because that's the way it needs to be. Now, I see that there's a whole lot of other colors on the palette.

Marriage equality is a term so ridiculous on its face that when you hear it mentioned, you would think you were in Riyadh. Years from now, perhaps we can lose the equality part, the same-sex part and call it what it is - marriage.

Lou Reed's music has been in the lives of millions of people all over the world for decades. He had a truly universal presence and was respected by musicians across all genres.

Never once have I thought that Social Security would be something that would ever be available to me.