Henry Rollins

I love to go on stage and sing.

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

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

I'm very boring.

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

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

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

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 not artistic nor am I all that creative.

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

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

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

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

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

I never thought about getting any tattoos removed.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I'm most comfortable on stage.

Most Americans are very cool people.

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

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.

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

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 take the work seriously, just not myself in it.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Collecting records is, for many, beyond a hobby.

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.

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

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.

Some music really does suck!

If I hear, 'Be afraid of Tehran,' I'm like, 'I'd better go to Tehran.'

The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.

I love being a storyteller. I love telling stories.

I think young people should travel and travel often to other countries... like I do.

I'm not exactly ambitious as much as I have a very good realization of what I am and what I am capable of.

There's always going to be a need for activism; there's always going to be a need for you and me doing the right thing, being very Lincoln-sonian in looking out for each other.

Music to me is mankind's greatest possible achievement because look at all the good it does.

I'm not a very good writer. I'm working at it.

All my big heroes are literary, writers.