Henry Rollins Quotes

There’s a small part of my heart that’s always sad
Part of me that walks with a slow aching step
Forever longing
The beauty of that
To be forever longing
Too much joy makes the time pass too quickly
A bit of sadness slows things down so you can see it

People that you thought were your friends give you shit about working hard. All I know is that we play hard and a lot of this shit is not fun. Playing is great but the way we live is not the life of a rockstar.

It would be nice to be touched by hands that didn’t want to kill or congratulate me. Sometimes the hands that want to kill me are mine.

Her mouth is a soft explosion of roses
A burst of raw animal definition
For a few moments I was mortal

We try to understand the pain of others but we can only understand it our way.

A bum stood at the Lucky Market right in front of Artesia & Blossom. He was begging for money. He looked pretty pathetic, dressed in rancid, oily clothes. He smelled like cigarettes and urine. “Can you spare a dime?” he would ask. People would shake their heads or walk around him. He was getting nowhere. Two hours went by, no money, not a cent. “Please, a dime!” cried the bum. A middle-aged man walked by him, heard his plea and laid upon him a mint new dime. “Thank you, sir! Thank you!” shouted the bum. Dime in hand, the bum limped over to a phone booth and called in the airstrike.

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 through the Christ machines. Through the eyes of the 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 spider’s jailhouse. I walk the think line, the thin line, the white line and all the lines in between. I wish I could trade in my eyes.

I want to walk in the desert tonight. I want the wind to pass over me. I want to let the poison bleed through the soles of my feet into the desert floor. I want to starve the monster. I want to punish it with thoughts of clean night wind.

"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 don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don't 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 didn't 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."

Nothing stays the same. Experience has a way of turning on you. You see and feel so much and then at a certain point, life starts to repeat. This is the start of wisdom and having “seen it all before.” This is when the true beauty/cruelty of life makes its presence known. This is when you go from being a film you don’t know the ending of, to being the star, director and screenwriter. I think there’s a danger to that. It’s why I try to keep at least some aspects of my life unplanned. You only get so many years before you become too good at what you do, to be all that good at it. It’s what happens when all the lights get turned on.

I will never be able to pound words into lines
To match the velocity of your presence

There’s a great feeling when you’re totally resolved. When you make the jump from being lonely to being only. When you’re so totally alone and absolute.

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

It hurt to pull out the slivers but I knew that I couldn’t bleed anymore, I had lost too much blood already. Now I remain, scarred and regaining strength.

Life has no instruction manual. Parts and labor can be impossible to find. Many go down the road with parts that are in great need of service. A breakdown is eventual.