Quotes by Henry Rollins

“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 isnt worth the time and effort.”

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

“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.”

“Clowns wear a face thats painted intentionally on them so they appear to be happy or sad. What kind of mask are you wearing today?”

“Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding”

““The whitest white dipped in clinging dirt. Another summer has thrown its corpse on my floor. The streets have given birth to even more strangers. Rivers of urine stripe the sidewalks. It rained the other day and the only thing that occurred to me was it would wash the smell away for a few days. Tonight is the first hot night. Outside my window, the human noise factor is intense. It’s past midnight. They talk too much. They scream liquor-fueled idiot chatter. I pull away and close the door. I think about how it’s all going to play out. How much time people spend trying to get across to each other, trying to clear their names. Trying to overturn the charges brought against them. I have decided to tell them that it’s all true and not seek a fair trial. It’s the only way to be free. Stop trying to matter. I could get my body tattooed with air-colored ink and walk invisibly amongst them. I have heard people say that they felt closer to their parents after they have died. Maybe if I treat people as if they were dead, I could get along with them better. I want to be able to like living people somehow. As it is now, they’re I best coming through speakers or trapped between book covers. Here I go into the heat. Four months as a human anvil.””

“I walk the straight lines. I walk through the summer nights. I walk the silver rope of dreams. I walk through dawns of dawns. There’s not a lot that isn’t dying. I see people parading in front of each other like insects in a killing jar, watching each other die. I walk the straight lines throught the Christ machines. Through the eyes of throwaway people. Through the wards and the shores and the cracks in the skulls of the sidewalks. Through love’s howling vacancy. I am the freedom soil. I dig my own grave. I resurrect myself every night. I am all things to myself. I walk the straight lines. I walk the spiders’s jailhouse. I walk the think line, the thin line, the white line and all the line in between. I wish I could trade in my eyes.”

“I must tell you that I was always afraid of the fury with which I loved you. It overwhelmed me. I thought it beyond comprehension, therefore my silence.”

“There are so many hammocks to catch you if you fall, so many laws to keep you from experience. All these cities I have been in the last few weeks make me fully understand the cozy, stifling state in which most people pass through life. I dont want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I dont want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case. I will turn and say to them It is you who are the basket case. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didnt even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times! And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup.”

“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 dont believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesnt matter - its only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.”

“Life will not break your heart. Itll crush it.”

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

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

“If you hate your parents, the man or the establishment, dont show them up by getting wasted and wrapping your car around a tree. If you really want to rebel against your parents: outearn them, outlive them, and know more than they do.”

“Nothing Brings People together more, then mutual hatred”

“The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down.”

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

“I want to meet a woman that will make me stop and listen to what she has to say. I want a woman who will make my jaw drop in awe. A woman that has little time for me. One who does not throw herself at me. One who respects herself who has a sense of herself. Where is she?”

“I was doing a show in Fife, Alabama last year. After the show I went to a Waffle House. Im not proud of it, I was hungry. And Im alone, Im eating and Im reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me: Hey, whatcha readin for?Isnt that the weirdest fucking question youve ever heard? Not what am I readING, but what am I reading FOR? Well, godammit, ya stumped me! Why do I read? Well... hmmm... I dunno... I guess I read for a lot of reasons, and the main one is so I dont end up being a fucking waffle waitress.”