Henry Rollins Year Quotations

Maybe some things are better left broken and scattered Veiled in darkness, secret bitterness and self-doubt I should have known better Than to start something that I couldn't finish That I couldn't care about That I couldn't remember starting in the first place I don't want to know you You went years without me You might as well keep going.

This is my 25th year of being on stage. A lot of people who I kind of toed up to the starting line with are no longer in this position. I feel very, very lucky.

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

When I think of Mick Jagger still singing that he can't get any satisfaction in over forty years of being in the Rolling Stones, I have to conclude that he's either lying or not all that bright.

In the late summer of 1986, the band I had been in for five years stopped playing. Suddenly, I was on my own. This new state of bandlessness was, at first, traumatic. When your group breaks up, a lot of broken parts hit the ground.

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

There's a lot of stuff like that that American's don't know and since a lot of Americans don't have a passport, I'll get a passport for them and since a lot of Americans don't know what a war looks like thirty, forty years laterand it's still doing damage.

My mother, a very eclectic listener, had the first Doors album and gave it to me when I expressed interest in the band. It was one of the first records I ever had. As the years passed, the babysitters who used to look after me would bring their Doors albums to the apartment, and that's how I got to hear their later work.

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.

Imagine a 15-year-old kid saying, 'I have two moms - it's cool.' I don't fear that at all.

Spring and fall, those are very inspiring times of the year for me.

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.

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.

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.

Motivation has always been a fascinating factor when considering a touring artist, especially when the years stack up. What keeps one out there year after year?

The Wacken festival started more than 20 years ago with just a few hundred people in attendance. Tickets now sell out before the lineup is announced.

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.

Marriage equality is a term so ridiculous on its face that when you hear it mentioned, you would think you were in Riyadh. Years from now, perhaps we can lose the equality part, the same-sex part and call it what it is - marriage.

The best compliment I get every year is that a band will write me and say, 'We were just on tour, and we had people coming to our show saying they had never heard us before they heard us on your show.'

I'm always looking, people are always presenting and I have found that every year of my life there's been great bands. All over the world, all the time. So when someone goes, "Music sucks now!" I'll go, "I don't think so. Not over at my house."

I'm usually busy - if you call me at the house, I get about four phone calls there a year - I'm usually running around the house with a pen in my mouth holding onto something, folding it, or doing something to it, and it's always a bad time.

There's no retirement, there's just a few years of non-work by the fire with someone bringing you some tea and relative peace and playing with the grandchildren.

I can't imagine being sixty years of age and playing music I wrote when I was in my twenties. I would rather sail the sea of consequence to new lands. Laps around the shallow end of the pool, not for me.

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.

The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.

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

I was raised in Washington, DC, very violent place. I grew up with violence. My introduction to music was violent. The years I've spent on tours, some of that was extremely violent.