The Best Henry Rollins quotes

The world’s a better place since I chose music. — Henry Rollins

Some music really does suck! — Henry Rollins

Music to me is mankind’s greatest possible achievement because look at all the good it does. — Henry Rollins

I don’t need music for the good times. I don’t have that kind of need. Music doesn’t serve me like that. — Henry Rollins

Musicians should not play music. Music should play musicians. — Henry Rollins

I think Perry Ferrell put independent music on a very good path with Lollapalooza. — Henry Rollins

Without the blues, modern music would be nothing like it is now–not remotely. — Henry Rollins

Live music is the cure for what ails ya. — Henry Rollins

When I write lyrics, it’s only when I’m angry or hurt or sad. So lyrically it’s never really easy going. And the music is always really intense. — Henry Rollins

One person’s roar is another’s whine, just as one person’s music is another’s unendurable noise. — Henry Rollins

Let’s pretend my career in music is a bell. Whether you like my music or not is up to you. But you’ve got to admit I rang that bell pretty hard and pretty often. — Henry Rollins

My first introduction to African music was by my mother, who bought the ‘Pata Pata’ album by the great Miriam Makeba when it came out. Now that is an album. What a voice. — Henry Rollins

In blues music, there’s a lot of borrowing, so it’s often difficult to identify the originator of a song. — Henry Rollins

For me, music was an age/time/place thing. One day I woke up and realized I was done. That was many years ago. — Henry Rollins

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. — Henry Rollins

Technically speaking, there is no music whatsoever on a CD. Lots of information, but no music. — Henry Rollins

You could split hairs and bring up words like ‘doo–wop’ and terms like ‘soul’ or ‘R&B’, but I think pop music is what you want it to be–that’s why it’s pop. — Henry Rollins

I know you’ll never love me but maybe you’ll stay for awhile. — Henry Rollins

Love heals scars love left — Henry Rollins

Love beyond the damage. — Henry Rollins

Kids need parents who love and support them unconditionally, full stop. — Henry Rollins

I love to go on stage and sing. — Henry Rollins

I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do. I love you more than I hate my loneliness and pain. — Henry Rollins

I like the idea of someone else’s love safely sealed in a song or a book. — Henry Rollins

There’s got to be someone for me. It’s not too much to ask. Just someone to be with. Someone to love. Someone to give everything to. Someone. — Henry Rollins

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

Anyone who wants to help me doesn’t. Anyone who wants to kill me might. Anyone who wants to love me better not. — Henry Rollins

I love capitalism. It rewards me for being brave–it awards me for being innovative and thinking out of the box. — Henry Rollins

In the city of Pyongyang, you don’t have to look very far to see an image of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung. They love the guy. He is responsible for the wonder that is North Korea. — Henry Rollins

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

Love is self deception. I am a living creature. Hate is only self love. I am a double feature. — Henry Rollins

Giving a good performance, giving it all is what it’s all about. I love to perform. — Henry Rollins

When you are young, there is so much ahead of you, it’s like the Saharan desert. You can’t even see across it. — Henry Rollins

I beg young people to travel. — Henry Rollins

As a young person, I wanted everyone to agree with me. — Henry Rollins

It’s hard for me to sympathize with a young person who chooses to go into the military because they know where they’re going. I think we need to start depopulating the military. — Henry Rollins

I was a very repressed young person. I wasn’t good at school. I didn’t fit in. — Henry Rollins

Do it or don’t. It’s amazing how many things in life are that easy. — Henry Rollins

Life is a hurdle and you’ll never clear it. Death is the end of the ride and you fear it. — Henry Rollins

Life is weird, great and dangerous. — Henry Rollins

I would like go to Palestine and interview people there about what their lives are like; same thing in Iran. — Henry Rollins

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

I’ve made some great mistakes in my life, but, you know, they were honest mistakes. — Henry Rollins

We are occupants. No one has any lasting purchase on life or on the planet. — Henry Rollins

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

I don’t want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. — Henry Rollins

Half of life is up–the other half is dealing with it. — Henry Rollins

When life hands you a lemon, say, ‘Oh yeah, I like lemons! What else ya got? — Henry Rollins

I live my life through the prism of capitalism and physiological limits and eventualities. — Henry Rollins

Life is death in slow motion. — Henry Rollins

Music keeps you young. Having music in your life keeps you open to things. — Henry Rollins

Youth is fleeting and life is short, you might as well strike hard. Anything else is just average. — Henry Rollins

If I had to live my life in anticipation of what others thought of me, little would get done. — Henry Rollins

The tasks I set out for myself are what I do to beat the perfect pointlessness of life. — Henry Rollins

It’s so painful to be next to someone you feel strongly about and know you can’t say the things you want to. — Henry Rollins

I guess I am famous in a way. I would rather consider it recognizable–I think that is more logical. I don’t feel famous. — Henry Rollins

You can pass all the gun legislation you want. None of it will make me feel any more or less safe than I do right at this moment. — Henry Rollins

I feel close to people like Jimi Hendrix because I connect with his music. Not the man but what he did. — Henry Rollins

I enjoy helping. I like doing benefits and things like that, but don’t feel the need to be thanked or even meet the people I am doing the benefit for. — Henry Rollins

I’m a recognizable person and some people feel the need for some reason to take me to task. You’re really messing with the wrong person on that one. — Henry Rollins

Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good. — Henry Rollins

You don’t make me feel like you used to. That’s why I’m leaving That’s why people leave each other They come to their senses and get selfish again. — Henry Rollins

Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but i feel more lonely in a crowded room with boring people then i feel on my owm. — Henry Rollins

As so much music is listened to via MP3 download, many will never experience the joy of analog playback, and for them, I feel sorry. They are missing out. — Henry Rollins

The world’s a better place since I chose music. I like the physical aspect of it, the volume and the intensity of it. It’s loud and hard. I like all that because inside me I feel like screaming. — Henry Rollins

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

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. — Henry Rollins

Rush Limbaugh makes money getting simpleminded people to feel good about their intellectually undernourished brain spasms. He’s very good at it, and I scarcely believe a fraction of what he says. — Henry Rollins

I take the work seriously, just not myself in it. — Henry Rollins

You don’t have to twist my arm to work. — Henry Rollins

I am very ambitious in a way, in that I’m not trying to be the richest guy or whatever. I just really like my work. — Henry Rollins

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

I didn’t want to work at Pizza Hut and I didn’t want to join the Army. So I just decided to go out and be awesome. — Henry Rollins

Citizens United didn’t work. Hey, Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Shellgame Adelson: Democracy trumps money sometimes. — Henry Rollins

I prefer to work out alone. It enables me to concentrate on the lessons that the Iron has for me. — Henry Rollins

I have no artistic sensibilities. I wish I did. It is probably really cool. I have work habits and work ethic. For me, all the things I do are jobs. — Henry Rollins

If I’m in L.A. for longer than 20 days, I’m looking for work, because I don’t do vacations. — Henry Rollins

This sounds really corny, but I am a slave to my work, a workaholic, and glad of it. I like what I do; this is my place, my little universe, one of them. — Henry Rollins

I will take the acting work when I can get it. I am not really an actor, that’s always apparent but it’s work and I’ll take it and am always glad for it. — Henry Rollins

When you have to work with and exist amongst cynical, burned–out personnel on a set, it doesn’t matter what you’re shooting or how much you’re being paid–it’s not worth it. — Henry Rollins

I’d rather work on my radio show, which no one hears but I put about eight hours of programming and writing into it for those 30 people who do tune in. — Henry Rollins

I spend a lot of time alone so I get a lot done. I don’t do much else but work, check things out. — Henry Rollins

The material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you, including yourself. — Henry Rollins

I lay off a lot modern fiction and only rely on living writers for non–fiction work. — Henry Rollins

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. — Henry Rollins

There is no place in the world like Australia. Not even its beautiful neighbor New Zealand. — Henry Rollins

In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks. — Henry Rollins

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

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

I don’t think you’ll ever have a perfect world because we humans are prone to error, and so we’re always in search of an upgrade. — Henry Rollins

When you’re kept out of the adult world, it’s a blessing in disguise. — Henry Rollins

I’m not close to people, I am close to myself. I spend a lot of time inside. — Henry Rollins

I am a pretty crazy person, so it’s best for me to be on my own most of the time. — Henry Rollins

I never think of what it’s going to be like later. I only think in the present tense. The only time I think backwards is when I have to reissue something. — Henry Rollins

It’s about time that governments feared the people instead of the other way around. — Henry Rollins

I try to be well informed. I don’t know how well I do all the time, but I try nonetheless. — Henry Rollins

No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as down time. All you got is life time. Go. — Henry Rollins

Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo–wop songs all the time. — Henry Rollins

I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does. — Henry Rollins

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

Creating problems is easy. We do it all the time. Finding solutions, ones that last and produce good results, requires guts and care. — Henry Rollins

The Great Gatsby’ is a book I have read a few times, and it seems to get heavier every time I come to visit. — Henry Rollins

Being unique is never easy, and often, by the time culture catches up with you, there are only a few people who notice. — Henry Rollins

The Ruts were a great punk rock band from England whose songs were as excellent as their time together was short. — Henry Rollins

Certainly, there are huge, multiplatinum bands whose singers command their audience’s attention. Sadly, much of the time they have little to say. — Henry Rollins

The opportunity to write for the ‘L.A. Weekly’ has been one of the better breaks that has come my way in a long time. — Henry Rollins

No time for drug addiction, no time for smoke or booze. Too strong for a shortened life span, I’ve got no time to lose. — Henry Rollins

To me, getting muscular was the first thing I ever achieved by working at it, and it was a game changer for me, because it was the first time I ever had confidence. — Henry Rollins