Henry Rollins

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

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.

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

Most Americans are very cool people.

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.

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

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

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

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.

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

August the summer's last messenger of misery is a hollow actor.

Nothing brings people together more then mutual hatred.

And I love the hate mail I get, the unsigned misspelled letters I get, telling me to go back to Russia or wherever.

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

In the summer of '84 you just couldn't escape the Born in the USA record.

There's no such thing as an ex-junkie.

I was a very repressed young person. I wasn't good at school. I didn't fit in.

When the movie comes out what anybody thinks of it doesn't really matter to me. I don't go to the wrap party. I don't go to the premiere.

I'm mellower now I'm over 50. But I don't think I'm too mellow. I'm still angry at a lot of things.

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.

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

I just travel the world with my backpack and my cameras and a bunch of Clif bars.

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.

I don't mean to be arrogant and I really appreciate my fans but talking about what I am doing is not something I'm good at. I do what I do and that's it. I want to get back to my work and do more of it instead of talking about it.

You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.

I have never experienced anything like walking out onto the stage of an oversold venue and before the first note is struck realizing that there is not going to be enough oxygen for all of us.

I have not the smarts or patience for political office.

I have always thought that change you can see and feel is best.

I think politicians get hamstrung by the nature of politics when the private sector can really do great things.

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

When you start to doubt yourself the real world will eat you alive.

After I left D.C. to join Black Flag I felt I was in a band.

There's no rule that you have to like Henry Rollins the musician or the actor.

Now if someone wants to spit on me I just roll up the window of my BMW 540i.

I take the work seriously just not myself in it.

I know I was a generic dysfunctional child but I think a lot of people are.

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.

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

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

I never thought about getting any tattoos removed.

I think more tolerance more people having more access to a chance to be literate and a chance to stay healthy makes for a more peaceful planet.

I'm most in my element on tour with a gig that day like today. I'm on the road where I am supposed to be. I will be where I'm supposed to be at nighttime on stage in front of people doing my thing.

When people hold you in high esteem it's very delicate relationship. When they meet you they're putting all their chips up. It's make or break.

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

Yes I guess you could say I am a loner but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own.

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

But I have a good life. I enjoy what I do. I am married to work.

So one way or another I found myself in a few movies. I take it seriously when I'm on the set but I don't take myself seriously as an actor.

I want to learn more about the world. It makes me want to get up and go.

My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.

I'm very boring.

I get angry about stuff I get very emotionally intense about stuff and that's how I get it out - with books with the band on my own onstage but it's always kind of a wail.

I mean Black Flag happened. I was lucky. I don't think I could have put together something with one percent of that oomph on my own.

I guess topic to topic you could consider me a left-leaning person.

I don't want to fail the audience. I don't want to let them down.

Collecting records is for many beyond a hobby.

Maybe I'm ego-tripping but I don't find myself a particularly horrible person so I don't think I need to hold back anything I think or feel.

I'd like to talk to Arnold Schwarzenegger 'cause I live in California and I just want to see that canned chemical filled body in my office.

There's a lot of mountain climbers trapped inside of bodies of people behind the counter at Kinko's.

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.

I can deal with people who watch me on stage but I am not good in communicating with people any other way than through my work.

I'm 36 and if I met a woman of my own age and married her I'd also be marrying her former life her past. It might be OK for some people - I don't want to judge it or anything - but it's not for me. It would destroy my creativity.

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

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.

The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs.

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.

To this day my haircut is the number two clippers which I apply to myself every month.

Every year August lashes out in volcanic fury, rising with the din of morning traffic, its great metallic wings smashing against the ground, heating the air with ever-increasing intensity.

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.

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.

War is very sad and small life is pathetically fragile at times.

I don't mind The Boss. I think he's an honest guy. I have some of his records not all of them. I've met a couple of the E-Street guys and they seem really cool.

You don't have to twist my arm to work.

And I laugh at myself when I screw things up which happens all the time.

If I had to perform in a comedy club I would bomb, I would be trying too hard.

It is just that I don't want a wife and I don't want kids.

I'm not artistic nor am I all that creative.

What I don't want to do is go out there and not be able to mean it you know?

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.

I love to go on stage and sing.

Some music really does suck!

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.

Every summer around late July and into August I find myself in Europe performing at any festival that will have me.

We know that in September we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost.

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

I've made some great mistakes in my life but you know they were honest mistakes.

The scarcity of the music not only makes the music itself enjoyable but it also gives the collector a strange sense of superiority.

Most of the people who call me a sellout were 7 when I was down face-first in the punk trenches.

Most poets are elitist dregs more concerned with proving their skill with a dictionary than communicating ideas with impact.

The world's a better place since I chose music.

I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride.

I'm most comfortable on stage.

There is no way you are going to be forgiven for blowing up a village and killing a bunch of people.

The blues is losing someone you love and not having enough money to immerse yourself in drink.