Henry Rollins quote: "We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don't. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success."

The ecstatic insanity of romantic pursuit can be so enhanced by music that entire romantic conquests...
HENRY ROLLINS

I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abando...
HENRY ROLLINS

Musicians should not play music. Music should play musicians.
HENRY ROLLINS

My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
HENRY ROLLINS

I think that humans have a huge capacity to carry pain and sadness. There are things that haunt us o...
HENRY ROLLINS

In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.
HENRY ROLLINS

The month of November makes me feel that life is passing more quickly. In an effort to slow it down,...
HENRY ROLLINS

You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.
HENRY ROLLINS

I wonder what it's like to be from a state that is spread across a few islands way out in the Pa...
HENRY ROLLINS

I once asked Ozzy Osbourne, truly one of my favorite people in the world, if he was cool with singin...
HENRY ROLLINS

Republicans just can't help themselves. They get in front of a live microphone and within a few ...
HENRY ROLLINS

Seven-11 is the pulse-beat of America. I think that Bruce Springsteen should do a song about a 7-11 ...
HENRY ROLLINS

You are the reason I don't want to die all the time. When I am with you, life is worth living. Tim...
HENRY ROLLINS

To burn a CDR of music you like to give as a gift to someone you wish to become closer to is a cold,...
HENRY ROLLINS

In Israel, there's a lot to learn from anyone, because to live there you've got to deal with...
HENRY ROLLINS

When I'm off the road, and I can really control my diet down to the calorie, I juice seven days ...
HENRY ROLLINS

We Californians can watch the Weather Channel for images of winter's brutality unleashed upon ou...
HENRY ROLLINS

It took me until my teenage years to realize that I was medicating with music. I was pushing back ag...
HENRY ROLLINS

Creating problems is easy. We do it all the time. Finding solutions, ones that last and produce good...
HENRY ROLLINS

Questioning anything and everything, to me, is punk rock.
HENRY ROLLINS

Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.
HENRY ROLLINS

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light, If I lose paper an...
HENRY ROLLINS

I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your ...
HENRY ROLLINS

I am on until I am dead, like a light bulb.
HENRY ROLLINS

I'm a big fan of the American Tapes label. But that's very hard to keep a grip on that becau...
HENRY ROLLINS

I've been in Iraq, and it never occurred to me to go, 'Hey, this war is bogus,' to some ...
HENRY ROLLINS

I don't know if music has ever achieved anything past appealing to the people that it appeals to...
HENRY ROLLINS

Now and then, someone is able to look at an empty space, conclude it would be a great place to start...
HENRY ROLLINS

When life hands you a lemon, say, "Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else ya got?"
HENRY ROLLINS

It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the mor...
HENRY ROLLINS

Don't go to summer camp. Bury your parents in the backyard and have the place to yourself.
HENRY ROLLINS

If I was gay, there would be no closet. You would never see the closet I came out of. Why? Because I...
HENRY ROLLINS

I have healthy disagreements with political parties I'm not aligned with, but I don't think ...
HENRY ROLLINS

Do you know why Albert Camus was so prolific? He wrote to keep from screaming.
HENRY ROLLINS

If you want to go the scorched-earth, Obamacare-is-like-slavery route and choose to stay uninsured, ...
HENRY ROLLINS

I don't know if you have ever seen the Woody Allen film 'Annie Hall,' but it is, in a wa...
HENRY ROLLINS

While I have no empirical evidence to back this up, I bet that the number of homosexual people per t...
HENRY ROLLINS

It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.
HENRY ROLLINS

I have come to regard November as the older, harder man's October. I appreciate the early darkne...
HENRY ROLLINS

Weakness is what brings ignorance, cheapness, racism, homophobia, desperation, cruelty, brutality, a...
HENRY ROLLINS

My motto is, 'Never quit.'
HENRY ROLLINS

As a young person growing up in Washington, D.C., summers were hot, humid and relentless. My friends...
HENRY ROLLINS

With any advent in technology, any technological innovation, there is the good and the bad.
HENRY ROLLINS

I am a veteran of the War on Christmas. I am just emerging from a battlefield strewn with dead trees...
HENRY ROLLINS

If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don't say you&...
HENRY ROLLINS

Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people ...
HENRY ROLLINS

Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to wor...
HENRY ROLLINS

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was vigorously and vociferously opposed by the Southern states. Preside...
HENRY ROLLINS

I think more airtime should be given to Donald Trump and Orly Taitz. They should run for office toge...
HENRY ROLLINS

Humans are pretty crafty but will fold quickly in severe cold.
HENRY ROLLINS

There's a lot of mountain climbers trapped inside of bodies of people behind the counter at Kink...
HENRY ROLLINS

I consider any gun that can chamber a round and send a projectile down its barrel at a high rate of ...
HENRY ROLLINS

I am an optimist because I want to change things for the better and I know that blood has to be spil...
HENRY ROLLINS

Amy Winehouse was not a person I ever met, and I can't say that I am overly conversant in all of...
HENRY ROLLINS

If it's a man's world, as they say, then men, your world is a poorly run carnage fest.
HENRY ROLLINS

I see walking bombs on the street
Hearts not beating, but ticking
HENRY ROLLINS

You don't make me feel like you used to.
That's why I'm leaving
That's why people leave ea...
HENRY ROLLINS

I'm not in a position where I get to pick and choose roles. I usually go on auditions in long li...
HENRY ROLLINS

I forged myself out of a vacuum. I crawl along the highway on hacked off stumps year after year. Som...
HENRY ROLLINS

It's one thing to buy a copy of 'Atlas Shrugged.' You actually have to read it to get an...
HENRY ROLLINS

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

I was happy to find out that when on tour, Dolly Parton doesn't use hotels but stays on her bus ...
HENRY ROLLINS

Every year, August lashes out in volcanic fury, rising with the din of morning traffic, its great me...
HENRY ROLLINS

August brings into sharp focus and a furious boil everything I've been listening to in the late ...
HENRY ROLLINS

August in sub-Saharan Los Angeles is one of the great and awful tests of one's endurance, sanity...
HENRY ROLLINS

August, the summer's last messenger of misery, is a hollow actor.
HENRY ROLLINS

For many years, I tried to make New Year's resolutions. I made lists and shot for great heights:...
HENRY ROLLINS

Maybe I'm just a psycho, and the stage is a better place to go than either the loony bin or some...
HENRY ROLLINS

I'd like to talk to Arnold Schwarzenegger, 'cause I live in California and I just want to se...
HENRY ROLLINS

Pizza makes me think that anything is possible.
HENRY ROLLINS

I have always identified with Joan Didion's depiction of Los Angeles and Southern California, ev...
HENRY ROLLINS

'SMiLE' is perhaps the Beach Boys' most legendary album. It was recorded in 1966 and 196...
HENRY ROLLINS

I just travel the world with my backpack and my cameras and a bunch of Clif bars.
HENRY ROLLINS

So I'm more at home with my backpack, sleeping in a hotel room or on a bus or on an airplane, th...
HENRY ROLLINS

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop...
HENRY ROLLINS

The perpetrators of the actual bad stuff that does real and lasting harm to people, like leakage of ...
HENRY ROLLINS

Being unique is never easy, and often, by the time culture catches up with you, there are only a few...
HENRY ROLLINS

The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute lit...
HENRY ROLLINS

To get a human through a life, lives of broken bones, knock-me-over-with-a-feather susceptibility to...
HENRY ROLLINS

I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probab...
HENRY ROLLINS

The truth is an anti-war statement in itself.
HENRY ROLLINS

America sold VX nerve gas and anthrax to Iraq for years, even after the Halabja gas attack, which ki...
HENRY ROLLINS

I spend several days at a time without enough sleep. At first, normal activities become annoying. Wh...
HENRY ROLLINS

As so much music is listened to via MP3 download, many will never experience the joy of analog playb...
HENRY ROLLINS

I've never heard Daft Punk; I've never heard a track of theirs in my life. They're the t...
HENRY ROLLINS

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

Life will not break your heart. It'll crush it.
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...
HENRY ROLLINS

I don't know how much you follow current events. For some, there's not enough time to keep u...
HENRY ROLLINS

To me, the real 'state of the union' is found in how Americans react to current events.
HENRY ROLLINS

Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a pe...
HENRY ROLLINS

Miles Davis would have this lineup of all these amazing musicians and one day would just say, 'W...
HENRY ROLLINS

Please don't think that I am one of those squishy types who can't handle reality. I have ple...
HENRY ROLLINS

People will remember that the Tea Party was co-opted and funded by billion-dollar corporations, and ...
HENRY ROLLINS

I have come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time to have too much pride in anything. Perh...
HENRY ROLLINS

I think it's important to have some documentation of the past.
HENRY ROLLINS

There are records that, in my opinion, only reach their full potential when the listener is disorien...
HENRY ROLLINS

Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in wh...
HENRY ROLLINS

If you listen to 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' by Gil Scott-Heron, that album is d...
HENRY ROLLINS

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

Music files and downloading have indeed changed the currency of music to a great degree.
HENRY ROLLINS

Some people see Black Friday as a much-needed break for their wallet. I see it as retail outlets sho...
HENRY ROLLINS

If you want to believe that humans walked with dinosaurs and the planet is a few thousand years old,...
HENRY ROLLINS

Each year, every city in the world that can should have a multiday festival. More people meeting eac...
HENRY ROLLINS

Watching a documentary with people hacking their way through some polar wasteland is merely a visual...
HENRY ROLLINS

I am not immune to the lure of a signed record, flier or set list. The fact that your music heroes p...
HENRY ROLLINS

Airports in major cities, like LAX, are trippy environments. It is at once a national and internatio...
HENRY ROLLINS

Death metal uses a lot of white face paint and black hair dye to make its point. I quite enjoy this ...
HENRY ROLLINS

In my bright, utopian future world, they will hand out college educations like cups of water at the ...
HENRY ROLLINS

Songs sung under duress are often very powerful.
HENRY ROLLINS

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

I'll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.
HENRY ROLLINS

Try driving the streets of Los Angeles without seeing a billboard depicting a film with a lead actor...
HENRY ROLLINS

Most poets are elitist dregs more concerned with proving their skill with a dictionary than communic...
HENRY ROLLINS

The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-bil...
HENRY ROLLINS

My first visit to West Berlin was in February 1983. The drive through East Berlin, the fact that Wes...
HENRY ROLLINS

For many, an album is no longer a considerable feat of an artist but just sounds to be half-listened...
HENRY ROLLINS

One of the odd enjoyments in life is to be alone in a room full of people. To have them there as unk...
HENRY ROLLINS

If the Constitution was a movie, the Preamble would be the trailer, the First Amendment the establis...
HENRY ROLLINS

One of the most insane environments I have ever spent time in is a gun range. There we are, all in a...
HENRY ROLLINS

I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the f...
HENRY ROLLINS

The GOP grows more and more unpopular with female voters seemingly every time one of its leaders get...
HENRY ROLLINS

I've made some great mistakes in my life, but, you know, they were honest mistakes.
HENRY ROLLINS

I know I was a generic dysfunctional child, but I think a lot of people are.
HENRY ROLLINS

I urge you to read the Occupy Manifesto, written by the New York City General Assembly. It is unavoi...
HENRY ROLLINS

I mean I appreciate fan mail and that the people like what I am doing but I can't answer it. If ...
HENRY ROLLINS

When I think of Mick Jagger still singing that he can't get any satisfaction in over forty years...
HENRY ROLLINS

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

'Fox News' will one day come to an end. Led Zeppelin will not. It's as simple as that.
HENRY ROLLINS

When a young non-white male is stopped and searched at the whim of a police officer, his idea of per...
HENRY ROLLINS

I've always seen it as the role of an artist to drag his inside out, give the audience all you&#...
HENRY ROLLINS

I would hate to think that some people have found themselves in a musical cul-de-sac and have ceased...
HENRY ROLLINS

With age, life becomes complex and difficult, often fraught with risk on several levels, from the pr...
HENRY ROLLINS

Whenever any great song or album gets lost in the ether, someone is deprived of the joy of hearing i...
HENRY ROLLINS

Being in New York is an almost overwhelming experience. While Washington, D.C., is my favorite Ameri...
HENRY ROLLINS

When I see the hatred exacted at Mr. Obama - you know, he lowered your taxes, killed your number one...
HENRY ROLLINS

Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ec...
HENRY ROLLINS

If I were a doctor, I would prescribe that you addict yourself deeply and irrevocably to music and n...
HENRY ROLLINS

Like a lot of inwardly drawn young people, I spent a lot of time in libraries. At my high school, I ...
HENRY ROLLINS

August used to be a sad month for me. As the days went on, the thought of school starting weighed he...
HENRY ROLLINS

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

I contribute a large amount of money to the Southern Poverty Law Center, so I'm on their mailing...
HENRY ROLLINS

Juan Williams is a very sharp guy.
HENRY ROLLINS

Citizens United didn't work. Hey, Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Shellgame Adelson: Democracy trumps ...
HENRY ROLLINS

I've been on 'Jay Leno,' and everyone likes Jay, but being on that show is a really bori...
HENRY ROLLINS

25 Years of Bullshit.
HENRY ROLLINS

For me, Memphis has always been a city that holds a great deal of meaning and also leads me to a lot...
HENRY ROLLINS

That Newt Gingrich or any mainstream Republican has the nerve to look down from what they perceive a...
HENRY ROLLINS

For many years, my favorite director has been the Japanese giant Akira Kurosawa.
HENRY ROLLINS

Literally thousands of lawsuits have been filed against the NFL by retired players, many of whom say...
HENRY ROLLINS

I think it is incumbent on anyone who can to lift human dignity to the highest possible levels, main...
HENRY ROLLINS

I am an employment hyena. I am happy to make a meal of what the lions leave behind.
HENRY ROLLINS

I think it's fantastic when the young enrage their elders. I really do believe that if it's ...
HENRY ROLLINS

Imagine someone so infatuated by a band that they have every different pressing of every album the b...
HENRY ROLLINS

And I love the hate mail I get, the unsigned, misspelled letters I get telling me to go back to Russ...
HENRY ROLLINS

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

Live music is the cure for what ails ya.
HENRY ROLLINS

I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don’t already know, and m...
HENRY ROLLINS

If you paid Americans a living wage, they would be able to pay for products made by Americans in Ame...
HENRY ROLLINS

The Wacken festival started more than 20 years ago with just a few hundred people in attendance. Tic...
HENRY ROLLINS

You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a...
HENRY ROLLINS

Mr. Christ, I read you as an infinitely patient entity who, as they say, often works in mysterious w...
HENRY ROLLINS

Marriage equality is a term so ridiculous on its face that when you hear it mentioned, you would thi...
HENRY ROLLINS

Nelson Mandela will always be the face of South Africa. The traveler passing through the country wil...
HENRY ROLLINS

I think more tolerance, more people having more access to a chance to be literate, and a chance to s...
HENRY ROLLINS

The fact is, in the minds of many, Trayvon Martin received the appropriate punishment for a true cri...
HENRY ROLLINS

Without the blues, modern music would be nothing like it is now - not remotely.
HENRY ROLLINS

Since the last tour I have done a lot of extensive travel to Iraq, Kuwait, Siberia, South Korea and ...
HENRY ROLLINS

I walk the straight lines. I walk through the summer nights. I walk the silver rope of dreams. I wal...
HENRY ROLLINS

I am ready for whatever's coming. I expect nothing but to be let down or turned away. I am alone. Go...
HENRY ROLLINS

I was burned out on people, their talk and their bullshit.
HENRY ROLLINS

You would think that pot had some kind of power; I mean come on, it's a plant, not a reason for livi...
HENRY ROLLINS

I want to meet a woman that will make me stop and listen to what she has to say. I want a woman who ...
HENRY ROLLINS

Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Beca...
HENRY ROLLINS

Keep your blood clean, your body lean, and your mind sharp.
HENRY ROLLINS

Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated.
HENRY ROLLINS

One day, I stopped hating.
I ceased all meaningless activity.
I completed the circle. I HENRY ROLLINS

Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold onto something or someone the more it wants to get awa...
HENRY ROLLINS

I am too far gone to be rehabilitated.
HENRY ROLLINS

Maybe some things are better left broken and scattered
Veiled in darkness, secret bitterness an...
HENRY ROLLINS

I would like to be able to gently drift in and out of existence when I wanted to.
HENRY ROLLINS

You can find me in the frozen mood section.
HENRY ROLLINS

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper an...
HENRY ROLLINS

Girls aren't beautiful, they're pretty. Beautiful is too heavy a word to assign to a girl. Women are...
HENRY ROLLINS

My main goal is to stay alive. To keep fooling myself into hanging around. To keep getting up every ...
HENRY ROLLINS

The first Van Halen album makes Johnny Rotten out to be what he really was and still is: a hairdress...
HENRY ROLLINS

Barack Obama's administration responded to the Haitian crisis within 24 hours. Here comes the so...
HENRY ROLLINS

Nothing Brings People together more, then mutual hatred
HENRY ROLLINS

I have always maintained that Iggy Pop is the Heavyweight Champion of Rock & Roll.
HENRY ROLLINS

They say true love only comes around once and you have to hold out and be strong until then. I have ...
HENRY ROLLINS

If you think about it, every single species is endangered. Homo sapiens at the front of the line, mo...
HENRY ROLLINS

We are misery-making machines! Homo sapiens has perfected the art of causing suffering. Pain is huma...
HENRY ROLLINS

Michele Bachmann is always a great person to go to for an opinion about anything. She has a very act...
HENRY ROLLINS

I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page...
HENRY ROLLINS

It's easy for me to play bad guys because it's a very linear acting. Bad guys aren't emp...
HENRY ROLLINS

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper an...
HENRY ROLLINS

There's no such thing as an ex-junkie.
HENRY ROLLINS

'Duck Dynasty' is a ridiculous show, and long may it wave. America and democracy will endure...
HENRY ROLLINS

Life is full of choices, if you have the guts to go for it. That's why I get immediately bored with ...
HENRY ROLLINS

To hate is to show you still care, who needs that, focus on what's really important.
HENRY ROLLINS

We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don't. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success.

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Henry Rollins

We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don't. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success.

Henry Rollins

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