Henry Rollins Quotes

I'll be here tomorrow
If I can make it through today.

I think to myself and at the same time, I know these thoughts can’t be the ones I really want to think. That there must be something better to have on my mind than what fills it and refuses to stop occupying all the room.

I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown. Eat interesting food. Dig some interesting people. Have an adventure. Be careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You’re going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about; I’m sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking 12 miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people — Americans and Europeans — come back and go, ohhhhh. And the light bulb goes on.

Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.

I don’t ask for much. I should ask for a lot, then maybe I might get some.

My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.

You know, we are one nation under a god. Yes, you were right. An angry, crack slinging god who decorates with bullets and spent condoms.

Florida Highway, 1986. Lonely slum. I passed through on low wheels. It was hot outside. Shacks, gas stations that didn't work, dead corn in fields, children on the road, retarded and dulled by the heat. Two girls waved as I passed.

It's hard to get along with people. As much as you try to like them and accept them as individuals, it becomes difficult because they keep getting out of line and wasting your time.

It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold onto something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it’s so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn’t come back. You’re left so alone that you can’t explain. Damn, there’s nothing like that is there? I’ve been there and you have too. You’re nodding you head.

Respect is not a one way street

A rose trapped inside a fist.

If I could I would melt into your arms
I would fall like ten dead languages
I would not front
I would not lie to you
I don’t think I could lie anymore
I have grown too old for such youthful pursuits
I want to love someone before I die
Hurry
It won’t be long now

If I let you, you would make me destroy myself. But in order to survive you, I must first survive myself. I can sink no further and I cannot forgive you. There's no choice but to confront you, to engage you, to erase you. I've gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. I will use my mistakes against you. There's no other choice. Shameless now. Nameless now. Nothing now. No one now. But my soul must be iron cause my fear is naked. I'm naked and fearless - and my fear is naked!

There’s no such thing as friendship. You just get what you need when you need it as fast as you can. The only reason that people give is so they can take later on.