Henry Rollins

I would like go to Palestine and interview people there about what their lives are like, ...
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The number of people who are actual supporters of Mr. Romney could very well be less ...
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Everything I do, writing, touring, travelling, it all comes from the punk and hardcore attitude, from ...
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Spring and fall, those are very inspiring times of the year for me.

When a band becomes as truly iconic as the Velvet Underground, there will often be a ...
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A country that has been through as much as Vietnam has to have some crazy music somewhere.

Adolescence is a plague on the senses.

A text conversation is a short exchange of often grossly truncated language that corresponds to a thought made all the more shallow by the process.

A lot of Americans don't have a passport, never will have a passport. Not only will they not travel, they don't want to travel.

After I wrapped 'Sons of Anarchy,' I traveled by myself for ten weeks. I started in Jordan and finished in Mali, in Timbuktu.

After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band.

America is a country born from semi-mythologized blood, glory and acts of selfless patriotic sacrifice.

All my big heroes are literary, writers.

Airports in major cities, like LAX, are trippy environments. It is at once a national and international gathering of those in transition: The euphoric, emerging from planes, their journey at an end, and the determined, about to depart.

America is off-the-hook gay. I will not go all Ann Coulter on you and say, 'Our gays are better than their gays,' but as far as countries go, we are in-your-face gay.

America sold VX nerve gas and anthrax to Iraq for years, even after the Halabja gas attack, which killed thousands of Kurds.

Amy Winehouse was not a person I ever met, and I can't say that I am overly conversant in all of her music. I do have her albums, and years ago, when I first heard her sing, I thought she was extraordinary. The tone of her voice, her phrasing, her raw appearance - these qualities were extremely captivating to me.

America's foreign policy lacks the backbone to do the right thing in Afghanistan - which is leave.

America was cool with Saddam Hussein when he was killing Iranians.

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

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

As a young person growing up in Washington, D.C., summers were hot, humid and relentless. My friends and I grew more restless and adventurous with every passing year.

As a teen, I heard the second Velvet Underground album, 'White Light/White Heat,' and it was too much for my limited scope of appreciation. It was intense, but I didn't get it.

Anything in this culture that stands still long enough eventually becomes okay if a person can derive an income from it. Eventually, pay-per-view public execution will happen, and it will be half-time entertainment.

As a young person, I was on the road playing music, so I was getting new environments shoved in my face whether I wanted them or not.

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

As performers grow older, I reckon there are two ways they can go. They can either be up there, playing more deeply from their guts than ever, or they can be phoning it in so crassly that it leaves a lump in your throat as you leave the venue at the end of the show.

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

As far as I have been able to understand, the Japanese seem to keep things close to the vest. Friendly but remote and polite to the point of being invisible. It is in the music, literature, film and art that the Japanese really seem to express themselves.

At times, I feel America is something that I can actually put my arms around, more than a land mass and a Constitution, something far more containable and understandable. I don't exactly know what it is, but at these times I feel completely woven into it.

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.

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

August used to be a sad month for me. As the days went on, the thought of school starting weighed heavily upon my young frame. That, coupled with the oppressive heat and humidity of my native Washington, D.C., only seemed to heighten the misery.

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

Before any American points a finger at President Putin and calls him nasty names, they should recognize that a lot of Americans agree with Putin on his stance against homosexual and transgender people.

Barack Obama's administration responded to the Haitian crisis within 24 hours. Here comes the soldiers, here comes the food, go go go... Rush Limbaugh told his multi-millions of listeners that Obama only did that to gain favour with black people in America. This is the kind of idiocy that I have to deal with in my country.

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

Being in New York is an almost overwhelming experience. While Washington, D.C., is my favorite American city, I regard New York City as the most amazing city in the world. No other comes close. It is an incredible, inexhaustible engine.

Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.

Before the Civil War, the Southern states were selling a lot of cotton to England and didn't seem to mind British occupation. By and large, the Revolutionary War wasn't at all great for business.

Between the Dinosaur Jr. albums and his recent solo albums, 'Several Shades of Why' and 'Heavy Blanket,' J Mascis is emerging as one of the last men from all that '80s indie madness, still writing songs that you want to listen to over and over.

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

Castle Face Records, run by The Oh Sees main man, Johnny Dwyer is always worth checking in with.

Canadians are often a friendly bunch.

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

Change is hard, but change is good.

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

Collecting records is, for many, beyond a hobby.

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

Chris Christie is New Jersey's concern, not America's.

Could it be that violence is as much a part of the American identity as the Constitution, and a vital component to its economic stability?

Contemporary bands often will do tour-only releases pressed and sold only in Australia. Crikey!

Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.

Death metal uses a lot of white face paint and black hair dye to make its point. I quite enjoy this genre for its intensity, extremism and underlying irony: You have to be alive to play it and listen to it.

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

Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.

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

Dinosaur Jr. in their live capacity are a band that put me in a state of such overwhelming rock that it often takes quite a while to come down.

Early spring is the time for vigorous change, a preparation for the heat-driven oppression that is to come.

Each year, every city in the world that can should have a multiday festival. More people meeting each other, digging new types of music, new foods, new ideas. You want to stop having so many wars? This could be a step in the right direction.

'Duck Dynasty' is a ridiculous show, and long may it wave. America and democracy will endure. They've seen a lot worse.

Enough Americans saw fit to give president Obama a second term. I don't think there will be many people keeping their Romney/Ryan bumper stickers on their cars.

Edward Snowden, who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, professes to have had access to whatever he wanted to know about anyone's anything. If he's telling the truth, why does he have such permeability without any government oversight? Is that OK with you?

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

Every single record I have is a fossil.

Every politician, every president gets votes by getting people that don't like him to like him. That's why politicians are slippery: because they talk out of both sides of their mouth.

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.

Every year, August lashes out in volcanic fury, rising with the din of morning traffic, its great metallic wings smashing against the ground, heating the air with ever-increasing intensity.

Every summer, around late July and into August, I find myself in Europe, performing at any festival that will have me.

Florida is a crazy place, and I have played some of the wildest shows of my life here.

Fish is the only kind of respirating thing that I consume. Everything else I don't want any part of.

Everything I do, writing, touring, travelling, it all comes from the punk and hardcore attitude, from that expression - from being open to try things but relying on yourself, taking what you have into the battle and making of it what you will, hoping you can figure it out as you go. Make some sense of it.

For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16, and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that.

Football is at least as 'gay' as rugby, Greco-Roman wrestling and the film '300.'

For many, an album is no longer a considerable feat of an artist but just sounds to be half-listened to while one is halfheartedly engaged in something else.

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

For many years, I tried to make New Year's resolutions. I made lists and shot for great heights: I would show altruism and exert moral strength, patience and all those other great attributes.

For me, Memphis has always been a city that holds a great deal of meaning and also leads me to a lot of thinking. Besides Sun Studio, which helped put rock n' roll on the map all over the world, the legendary Stax Studio also called Memphis home.

For me, jazz will always be the soundtrack of the civil rights movement.

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

For the last 30-plus years, I have been doing one long, uninterrupted improv.

For me, returning to Los Angeles annihilates the memories of where I have just been with an astonishing speed.

Guns are part of the American identity.

Giving a good performance, giving it all is what it's all about. I love to perform.

George Zimmerman is a foot soldier in a rapidly privatizing country. He is a new centurion of 21st-century America. Law enforcement is tied down by the strictures of, well, the law. There is only 'so much they can do' to take care of the 'problem.'

Having an identity is one thing. Being born into an identity is quite a different matter.

Have you ever heard the expression 'one hot mess?' I think the term was custom-made for the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford.

Harmony is boring.

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

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

I am a veteran of the War on Christmas. I am just emerging from a battlefield strewn with dead trees and torn shreds of brightly colored wrapping paper.

I always start tours with a great deal of anticipation.

I always found the Chicago audience to be a smart, fast-moving, violent and cheerful lot, and it's always good to be back.

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

I am afforded a bit of easy wonderment in relative comfort as to how humans have lasted so long. Climate- and geography-wise, the planet seems to have little use for us.

I am not immune to the lure of a signed record, flier or set list. The fact that your music heroes potentially had, in their own hands, the record you now have in yours is kind of cool. When the musician has departed, it can give the thing a unique power.

I am neither pro- nor anti-gun. I am gun-conscious.

I am an optimist because I want to change things for the better and I know that blood has to be spilled and disharmony and cruelty are necessary to do that.

I believe that contentment or any sustained period of joy that doesn't inspire thought that leads to action almost immediately is useless.

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

I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.

I can only write about personal stuff, about my point of view.

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.

I come from a town of great musicians: Washington, D.C. It's no joke, that history.

I can't remember that I ever had just a minute of stage fright.

I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter - it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.

I contribute a large amount of money to the Southern Poverty Law Center, so I'm on their mailing list for all their Klan Watch newsletters. I'm very well aware of White Power movements in America.

I consider any gun that can chamber a round and send a projectile down its barrel at a high rate of speed into my body - causing me injury or death - to be an assault weapon.

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

I don't believe it mattered to Timothy McVeigh who was president or who his congressional representative was when he blew up the Murrah Building in 1995.

I don't hate the government. I don't think the Second Amendment is being infringed upon.

I don't know how much you follow current events. For some, there's not enough time to keep up on what's happening, for others, the news is too depressing, and peering too deeply fills one with boiling frustration all too quickly.

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.

I don't mean to be arrogant and I really appreciate my fans but talking about what I am doing is not something I'm good at. I do what I do and that's it. I want to get back to my work and do more of it instead of talking about it.

I don't know if you have ever seen the Woody Allen film 'Annie Hall,' but it is, in a way, to Los Angeles and 'Hollywood' what 'This Is Spinal Tap' is to many musicians.

I don't know if music has ever achieved anything past appealing to the people that it appeals to. If a song could stop a war, then Bob Marley and Bob Dylan songs would have stopped one or two.

I don't mind The Boss. I think he's an honest guy. I have some of his records, not all of them. I've met a couple of the E-Street guys, and they seem really cool.

I don't mind bees and think we are all the better for having them around. I like the taste of honey.

I don't want to fail the audience. I don't want to let them down.

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.

I don't need to have my convictions confirmed by a show of numbers. However, being among people in front of a band leads me to believe that all is not lost, that humans, now and then, can communicate on a higher level than the political and the practical.

I forged myself out of a vacuum. I crawl along the highway on hacked off stumps year after year. Some wonder how and why. I never do.

I find it takes a lot of strength to endure myself.

I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride.

I get angry about stuff, I get very emotionally intense about stuff and that's how I get it out - with books, with the band, on my own onstage, but it's always kind of a wail.

I get along with Australians really well. Everyone's usually really cool, and it's always a drag to leave.

I get letters from young people telling me that they're broke and download my albums for free. They ask me what I think about that. I now have a standard line. I tell them, 'I would rather be heard than paid.'

I hate painting with a broad brush, but I think the birther thing, at its root, is racist. The guy was born in Hawaii. A black guy is president. It's cool. Get over it. Just deal with it. There's nothing you could show these birther people that would shut them up.

I guess, topic to topic, you could consider me a left-leaning person.

I have always identified with Joan Didion's depiction of Los Angeles and Southern California, ever since reading 'Play It As It Lays,' 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' and 'The White Album.'

I have a lot of compact discs. I need them for radio play and convenience. Many bands and artists I am a fan of don't always release their work on vinyl, so I take what they feel like giving me.

I have been an XL fan of Devo since I was in high school in the 1970s. Their records only sound better with time.

I have always thought that change you can see and feel is best.

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

I have been listening to the Stooges' self-titled first album for well over half my life, and it remains one of the most exciting and essential records I have ever had the good fortune to come into contact with.

I have been curious about Haiti for many years. The history of the country is as fascinating as it is turbulent.

I have come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time to have too much pride in anything. Perhaps it's good to have a sense of duty, a jealous zeal to protect or improve, but pride ultimately is only that which stands vulnerable to offense and degradation.

I have come to regard November as the older, harder man's October. I appreciate the early darkness and cooler temperatures. It puts my mind in a different place than October. It is a month for a quieter, slightly more subdued celebration of summer's death as winter tightens its grip.

I have been restless for as long as I can remember.

I have healthy disagreements with political parties I'm not aligned with, but I don't think it should be to the point where we're cursing and trying to strangle each other.

I have had a number of less-than-enviable moments in my life when dealing with other people. I won't attempt to blunt that by saying I am not the only one.

I have never experienced anything like walking out onto the stage of an oversold venue and, before the first note is struck, realizing that there is not going to be enough oxygen for all of us.

I have lived in public as a somewhat recognizable person since I was a teenager. Emails I answer end up posted on sites, pictures of me and someone I just met, taken by a cellphone, literally number in the thousands and are easily accessed.

I have not the smarts or patience for political office.

I just get things done instead of talking about getting them done. I don't go out and party. I don't smoke, drink or do drugs and I'm not married, that leaves a lot of time for my work.

I have to do things for myself, and if those standards are set high, then it's up to me to pass or fail.

I know that collector types can be a pain in the neck and seem perpetually frozen in time - or at least in their parents' basement - but someone has to look out for the past, lest it slip away forever.

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

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

I love being a storyteller. I love telling stories.

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

I mean Black Flag happened. I was lucky. I don't think I could have put together something with one percent of that oomph on my own.

I love to go on stage and sing.

I love capitalism. It rewards me for being brave - it awards me for being innovative and thinking out of the box.

I need to do things on my own, need to be left alone.

I mean I appreciate fan mail and that the people like what I am doing but I can't answer it. If I would answer 25 letters a day I would be just a guy answering mail and not an artist anymore.

I never thought I was right for TV or that TV was right for me.

I never thought about getting any tattoos removed.

I never had any interest in being involved with the Boy Scouts.

I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.

I plan to be a part of Haiti's reconstruction and future.

I once asked Ozzy Osbourne, truly one of my favorite people in the world, if he was cool with singing Black Sabbath songs year after year, whether he was performing with Black Sabbath or out on a solo tour. He said it was great.

I spend several days at a time without enough sleep. At first, normal activities become annoying. When you are too tired to eat, you really need some sleep. A few days later, things become strange. Loud noises become louder and more startling, familiar sounds become unfamiliar, and life reinvents itself as a surrealist dream.

I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was up early watching television and watched the announcement. I didn't understand what the word 'assassinated' meant.

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

I still have dreams about CBGB's. I still miss the place.

I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.

I think a lot of Americans have never been all that hungry. They've never had war on their shore, and they've never suffered the way other cultures have suffered. I'm not saying we should go suffer. Not at all. I'm saying we should be more aware of how other cultures exist.

I tend to gravitate to the darkest or most obscure part of any venue in an effort to have my own space to experience the music on my own, free from unwanted conversations and other distractions.

I think it's fantastic when the young enrage their elders. I really do believe that if it's too loud, you are indeed too old, and that if it has been standing for too long, it needs a thorough inspection.

I think it is incumbent on anyone who can to lift human dignity to the highest possible levels, maintaining one's own and helping to raise that of others.

I think more tolerance, more people having more access to a chance to be literate, and a chance to stay healthy makes for a more peaceful planet.

I think more airtime should be given to Donald Trump and Orly Taitz. They should run for office together. They should open for Charlie Sheen.

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

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

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

I think self-reliance and self-responsibility and self-accountability will help you as a parent, a teacher, as a citizen as a friend.

I think politicians get hamstrung by the nature of politics when the private sector can really do great things.

I think young people should travel and travel often to other countries... like I do.

I think the U.K. is an amazing place and has been extremely good to me. Some of my favorite and most-listened-to bands are from England. I have met many good people there and have been in front of some of the most loyal audiences I have ever encountered.

I think that humans have a huge capacity to carry pain and sadness. There are things that haunt us our entire lives, we are unable to let them go. The good times seem almost effervescent and dreamlike in comparison with the times that didn't go so well.

I thought I was gonna be in the minimum-wage working world all my life.

I think, to a great degree, we humans still divide ourselves into two species, even though we are monotypic. There are males and females. We see them as different and not equal.

I try to get myself up and moving as early as possible. Optimum is to be on the treadmill while it is still dark outside.

I try to be well informed. I don't know how well I do all the time, but I try nonetheless.

I want to learn more about the world. It makes me want to get up and go.

I want to change things for the better, just like everybody else.

I urge you to read the Occupy Manifesto, written by the New York City General Assembly. It is unavoidably clear. This is not directionless action. If it were, the media would have moved on.

I was at the first Minor Threat show, and you could tell, 'This band is going to be the king of the town.' It was obvious. They were so good.

I was a very repressed young person. I wasn't good at school. I didn't fit in.

I was happy to find out that when on tour, Dolly Parton doesn't use hotels but stays on her bus every night, to the point of having her buses shipped from Austria to Australia so she can tour the way she sees fit. I used one of her buses once - an honor.

I was in Pakistan in Islamabad when Bhutto was assassinated, and the next day, you know, there's just plumes of smoke everywhere. I mean, Islamabad is on fire.

I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.

I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to tour with the Beastie Boys and watched almost every set they played on all those dates. Why not? You do your set and then you get to see the Beasties play? Best deal in town.

I wonder if it is Australia's great distance from more populated land masses that allows its inhabitants to be left to their own devices, to be incredibly creative and, at times, to be wonderfully weird.

I wonder how Colin Powell sleeps at night. I would like to have a word with him because he lied. He lied. He lied to me. He lied to my face through the camera at the U.N.

I would hate to think that some people have found themselves in a musical cul-de-sac and have ceased to explore new music, or at least music that is new to them, because they are so glued to the past.

I wonder what it's like to be from a state that is spread across a few islands way out in the Pacific Ocean, only added to the United States in 1959. Not only that but to be the birthplace of America's first black president? Pretty cool, I bet.

I would like to become a better photographer. I'm working on that.

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

I'd love to talk to Janeane Garafalo or Randi Rhodes or Stephanie Miller from Air America. I'm an Air American junkie, I listen to them every day.

I'd like to talk to Sean Hannity in a controlled environment and say, 'O.K., you can't interrupt and jump up and down like a professional wrestler.'

I'd like to talk to Arnold Schwarzenegger, 'cause I live in California and I just want to see that canned, chemical filled body in my office.

If I had to perform in a comedy club I would bomb, I would be trying too hard.

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