Henry Rollins

I'm not into fame. I'm not into making money, outside of financing my books. I'm not into status. My thing is basically about time - not wasting it.

If you listen to 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' by Gil Scott-Heron, that album is dripping with rage.

I don't cuss in songs. It's too easy.

This is my own little rock theory: In my mind, Nirvana slayed the hair bands. They shot the top off the poodles.

There's tons of junk food for your mind on the Internet. You can sit there for three or 10 or 20 hours a day getting in online arguments with other people who also choose to waste their time.

As a young person, I was on the road playing music, so I was getting new environments shoved in my face whether I wanted them or not.

Anything in this culture that stands still long enough eventually becomes okay if a person can derive an income from it. Eventually, pay-per-view public execution will happen, and it will be half-time entertainment.

I always start tours with a great deal of anticipation.

I would like to become a better photographer. I'm working on that.

Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ecosystem, and what gets in the way of it is politicians and apathy.

The best compliment I get every year is that a band will write me and say, 'We were just on tour, and we had people coming to our show saying they had never heard us before they heard us on your show.'

Miles Davis would have this lineup of all these amazing musicians and one day would just say, 'We're done.' After tons of great records and tickets sold, he said, 'Now I'm going to grow my hair out and play my horn through a wah-wah pedal.' Rather than play it safe, he went on.

Rarely do I do film press because I'm so low on the food chain of the movie, and for me it's just this thing I did for four weeks before the next tour started.

I find it takes a lot of strength to endure myself.

When you're going into an employment environment that looks pretty scary, it is easy to lose your moral compass, your decency, your sense of civility and your sense of community.

Without an education, you won't have a future.

I'm actually on the Twitter like all those crazy young kids are, and if I'm going to do an in-store appearance or I post something on my website, I tweet these followers, a word I don't like so much, and over 50,000 people go, like, 'Okay, I got it.'

A lot of Americans don't have a passport, never will have a passport. Not only will they not travel, they don't want to travel.

When someone asks you, 'What's punk?' my reply is, 'If you have to ask, you're never going to know.'

The kid who throws his spaghetti from the high chair onto his father's face, he's pushing back. He's sticking it to the man as he sees it. I like that. So that is punk.

Where there is young people and vitality, you're going to find punk rock.

I'm pessimistic. I don't think that justice always gets the right person.

I'm not harmful, just introspective. You can probably think I'm weird, but it's not harmful weird.

You want to meet a bunch of really friendly people? Go to a Slayer concert. There'll be some real psychos there, but most of those people will take care of each other.

To see change in your own area code is very powerful. There's a little orphanage down the street from my company, and we donate $1 from the sale of each CD we sell to the orphanage.

I'd like to talk to Sean Hannity in a controlled environment and say, 'O.K., you can't interrupt and jump up and down like a professional wrestler.'

The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he's a criminal instead of a scholar. It's business.

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

I think the U.K. is an amazing place and has been extremely good to me. Some of my favorite and most-listened-to bands are from England. I have met many good people there and have been in front of some of the most loyal audiences I have ever encountered.

I try to be well informed. I don't know how well I do all the time, but I try nonetheless.

The idea that any performer type is owed anything is a joke to me.

My motto is, 'Never quit.'

I've never heard Daft Punk; I've never heard a track of theirs in my life. They're the two guys with motorcycle helmets on?

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.

The truth is an anti-war statement in itself.

I still have dreams about CBGB's. I still miss the place.

I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm willing to bet one of my arms right now that as long as there's electricity, Ramones music is going to be relevant.

I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.

I was at the first Minor Threat show, and you could tell, 'This band is going to be the king of the town.' It was obvious. They were so good.

We're at peak oil, peak water, peak resources, and so either we figure it out and let science lead or we head down a very bad, dark trail to where a lot of people aren't going to make it.

It's why real men just go out in the woods and howl. I must do it and get paid.

I've been in Iraq, and it never occurred to me to go, 'Hey, this war is bogus,' to some guy who's 24 hours a day trying not to get shot at or blown up.

I'm not in a position where I get to pick and choose roles. I usually go on auditions in long lines and embarrass myself in front of casting directors, and with a lump in my throat and my ears burning, I walk past reception and smirking actors as I go to the parking garage and go back on the highway.

I like boring black and white films with subtitles. I'm basically a drip.

I'm terrified of motorcycles. I've been on one a couple of times. I did not like it.

If I'm jetlagging, and I've missed some meals, and it gets to that point in a movie that you're supposed to cry, I'll let my defences down from around my inherent standing level of cynicism, and I'll cry.

Even though I am not hungry when I get up, I try to eat to get me ready for the day. Within an hour of getting up.

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.

I'm disappointed by bands left and right, every day.

It's hard to get people at a record company to talk about music. They don't seem to want to talk about music, it's all marketing, and that's part of a record, you gotta get it out there, people have gotta hear it, but you could do it in a way that's not repulsive.