Henry Rollins

“Why let your fury lay deep inside you, sullenly boiling your blood into silent steam and griding your bones to dust? I it not better to thrust it out with great velocity from every pore, with your every action? Let your actions speak your legend. The physical is the manifestation of the spirit. Let your spirit be teeming with fury. Let your strength be unusual and controlled. The average is the borderline that keeps mere men in their place. Those who step over the line are heroes by the very act. Go.”

“I have gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain.”

“I want someone who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don't already know and make me laugh. I don't care what you look like, just turn me on. And if you can do that, I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow. I will nibble your mukluks with my own teeth. I will do your windows. I will care about your feelings. Just have something in there.”

“It wasn't until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain. When I finish a set that leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I know it can't be as bad as that workout.”

“I've said it before and I say it again: "A man's got to do what a brainless idiot's got to do.”

“I don’t want people to matter to me too much. Sometimes it hurts too much to think about them. Ones you love who don’t love you, ones who are dead or hate you, ones who you think about but never get to be with. I like people but when I get too close, it fucks me up and I can’t get things done.”

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

“You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others.”

“Don't hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you're against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet 'H' on your shirt, and say, 'I am a homophobe!”

“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.”

“Help me to withstand your beauty as it stands out of reach. Give me the capacity to forget ever having felt your touch.”

“You can find me in the frozen mood section.”

“No magic. I do believe you might have taken it all with you when you went away.”

“I cling to my memories of glorious desperation.”

“I hate it when men go to strip bars. It lowers the rest of us that know if a man has to pay to see a woman naked, he is a loser and probably should get weeded out.”

“Somewhere, someone isn’t impressed by your looks. Not all men jump through the hoops of your fire. You’re unbelievably boring to more people than you’ll ever know.”

“Horror jolts me when I look at one of you and see a pair of beautiful eyes that make me think your mind might contain a world that could hold me as the bolts shake loose and fly from my frame.”

“I am too far gone to be rehabilitated.”

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

“You’ll never know that just sitting across a room full of people, I have transformed you into a goddess. A destroyer of despair.”

“I think of the thrill of an intelligent woman talking just to me.”

“People are best on records and books because you can turn them off or put them back on the shelf.”

“Here in this moment we are beautiful, nocturnal creatures and our thoughts and words are jewels guarded by the moon.”

“You are the untold story. You are the impassioned truth wanting to scream its existence, to be forever trapped by a strong hand clapped firmly over the mouth of my soul.”

“I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.”

“perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch.”

“It is our destiny to be born beautiful into an ugly age.”

“I like the idea of someone else’s love safely sealed in a song or a book.”

“I know you’ll never love me but maybe you’ll stay for awhile.”

“Everything you do makes my body scream with loneliness.”

“Basically, men are afraid of women and can’t handle the fact that they came out of the same thing they spend the rest of their lives trying to get back into.”

“My desires are foolish. The things I want are better kept to myself. The hand of silence is steady. The hard blade of silence is clean like night. The code is absolute. Silence is eternal and patient. Silence never makes a fool of itself like I have so many times.”

“I’m packed with broken glass and memories and it all hurts.”

“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.”

“You can still function as a living ruin.”

“The times I have tried to get close to someone resulted in me feeling threatened and weak.”

“Is it a shame that I can’t accept love? Am I too burned out to move towards what will keep me alive or too smart to get pulled into someone else’s world?”

“Look, it's a monster. He's walking alone. Look, he's pulling something out of his pocket. He threw it on the ground. Let's go see what it is. It's a black box. You open it... ok... Look, it's sorrow, misery and pain. It's loneliness and longing. Boy, he'll be sorry he lost these.”

“How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to re-live them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold-plating thinly coated over lead, chalk and peeling paint.”

“Yes, I guess you could say I am a lonerbut I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own”

“I'll be here tomorrowIf I can make it through today.”

“You can't right the wrongs because you'll never understand the cause and you'll be too busy dodging the effect.”

“Anyone who wants to help me doesn't. Anyone who wants to kill me might. Anyone who wants to love me better not.”

“I would like to be able to say that she broke my heart but I know better. I broke my own heart. I can't say that she did it and get behind that statement in any real way. I know too much. The only one I can blame for my loneliness is myself. Even if I did think that she did it to me I wouldn't feel any better. Tonight I was watching a movie and this actor in the film looked like her when she had a profile shot. She did not break my heart I did. I don't know why I would do something this painful to myself. I wish I would stop it's been months now and I'm still hurting myself nightly. I can avoid it for awhile and then it comes back.”

“I like walking heavy on these disease-ridden streets. I like walking the streets knowing that underneath my jacket is the perfect solution to any dilemma I might encounter. I look at people differently. I meet their gaze until they look away. I like taking my gun for walks. I do not believe in hope. I do not believe that people are going to someday get it together and live in peace and harmony. I don't have time for political correctness. I'm not going to try to talk my way out of a bad situation. I'm just going to shoot the fucker in the face and be done with it.”

“Yeah, that’s my experience. Humbling to the point where you have major regrets about some of the stupid things you said, some of the things you thought were right. You keep going to these countries, and it’s like, you forgot the lesson from the last time. Because the first person you encounter kind of bitch-slaps you upside the head in the most wonderful, innocent way and you realize, God, I’m still an asshole. And this guy, by doing nothing except being broke and so incredibly polite—it takes you aback, you realize, I’m still not there yet. I still have like eight miles to go before I can even get into the parking lot of humility. I have to keep going back. It’s like going back to a chiropractor to get a readjustment. That’s me in Africa, that’s me in Southeast Asia. You come back humbled and you bring that into your life. It’s made me much more tolerant of other peoples—and I’m not saying I used to be a misogynist, or I used to be a racist, that was never my problem. But I can be extremely headstrong, impatient, rude. Like, “Hurry up, man. What’s your problem? Get out of my way.” That sentiment comes easy to me. Going to these countries, you realize none of that is necessary, none of it’s cool, it’s nothing Abraham Lincoln would do, and so why are you doing it? Those are the lessons I’ve learned.”

“I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don’t already know, and make me laugh. I don’t care what you look like, just turn me on. And if you can do that, I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow. I will nibble your mukluks with my own teeth. I will do your windows. I will care about your feelings. Just have something in there.”

“I just want to be able to stand up straight for a little while before I get cut down.”

“Love is self deception. I am a living creature. Hate is only self love. I am a double feature.”

“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.”