Henry Rollins

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

I'm terrified of motorcycles. I've been on one a couple of times. I did not like it.

I'm of the opinion that the Democrats have the ideas I agree with more often than not. Reenergizing the middle class and giving people a break.

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

Live music is the cure for what ails ya.

Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good.

In the summer of '84, you just couldn't escape the Born in the USA record.

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 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.

When you're holding people's attention, I feel you must give them high-quality ingredients. They deserve nothing but your best. And if they need information, get it, cross-check it, and try to be right. Do not waste their time; do not enjoy the ego trip of being onstage.

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.

Pride is a thing that I have tried to abandon completely. Try as I might, pride still creeps into many of the things I do.

Seven-11 is the pulse-beat of America. I think that Bruce Springsteen should do a song about a 7-11 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, but write it in such a way that American's youth can identify and slurp along with the Boss. Hail the Boss! Hail 7-11!

Sleep is for squares.

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.

The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.

The month of November makes me feel that life is passing more quickly. In an effort to slow it down, I try to fill the hours more meaningfully.

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.

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

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.

You can't get your head around something if you're yelling.

So I'm more at home with my backpack, sleeping in a hotel room or on a bus or on an airplane, than I am necessarily on a bed. It's weird being here. It feels like I'm standing next to my real life.

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'm most in my element on tour, with a gig that day, like today. I'm on the road where I am supposed to be. I will be where I'm supposed to be at nighttime, on stage, in front of people, doing my thing.

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

Someone like Ashlee Simpson, she lip-synchs on 'Saturday Night Live,' gets totally called out la Milli Vanilli, and no one really cares that much. It doesn't make me hate Ashlee; she's just taking instructions.

The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he's a criminal instead of a scholar. It's business.

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

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.

Watching a documentary with people hacking their way through some polar wasteland is merely a visual. Actually trying to deal with cold that can literally kill you is quite a different thing.

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

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.

Texas is a hotbed of insanely good bands and musicians.

What goes best with a cup of coffee Another cup.

I'm pessimistic. I don't think that justice always gets the right person.

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.

Nelson Mandela will always be the face of South Africa. The traveler passing through the country will see Mandela's face almost everywhere he looks. Truly, the man is omnipresent.

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

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.

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.

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

I'm most comfortable on stage.

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

Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own.

If there is one set of laws, one Constitution for every citizen, its protections hopefully applied equally to all, then why do the results seem to differ so radically? What do you call that? Look around - you're living in it.

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.

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

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.

Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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 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.

I'm not a very good writer. I'm working at it.

My laptop seems to know where I am, even if I don't. My cellphone asks me if I want directions to anywhere from the spot I am standing in. I buy a record online and Amazon.com sends me letters, telling me that people who bought what I bought also bought these other records.

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

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

Ramones music has a Pavlovian effect on me - the song starts, and the world blurs around the sound.

The Internet, the camera cellphone and the like have not only sped up the world's information uptake, but they have cheapened that which they capture.

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'm not exactly ambitious as much as I have a very good realization of what I am and what I am capable of.

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

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

You might as well enjoy the day - you never know when and how painfully it could all end.

You want to meet a bunch of really friendly people? Go to a Slayer concert. There'll be some real psychos there, but most of those people will take care of each other.

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

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.

Life is weird, great and dangerous.

Think about it: No matter who you are, the past plays a large part in your life. I am all about living in the present as best as I can. Try as I might, there is only so much I am able to achieve on this front.

Well, we run my ship differently. Any offer that comes in, I yay or nay it, no matter how insane it is. Like, if someone asks me if I'm interested in doing a porn film, the answer to that is going to be no, but it comes to me anyway. I'm responsible for making the call.

When you are young, there is so much ahead of you, it's like the Saharan desert. You can't even see across it.

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

Most Americans are very cool people.

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

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

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.

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

It's one thing to buy a copy of 'Atlas Shrugged.' You actually have to read it to get anything out of it.

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.

It's hard to judge literary merit.

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

What does New York sound like? For me, the Charlie Parker at the Royal Roost recordings on the Savoy label are the total embodiment of the New York music experience.

My unconditional sure thing is that I don't have one.

You must never lower yourself to being a person you don't like.

Kids need parents who love and support them unconditionally, full stop.

The fact is, in the minds of many, Trayvon Martin received the appropriate punishment for a true crime: He was black, male and dared to walk outside. In life, young Trayvon was just a teenager; in death, he has been transformed into a scary, lurking, suspicious, prone-to-violence spook.

If people are being upstanding citizens of the Republic, then you have to widen the net to incarcerate them. This explains why America's prisons are full of nonviolent offenders - a perfect example of American exceptionalism.

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

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

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.

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

Young African-American males: Stop existing. It could get you killed.

Lou Reed's music has been in the lives of millions of people all over the world for decades. He had a truly universal presence and was respected by musicians across all genres.

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.'

Collecting records is, for many, beyond a hobby.

I'm actually on the Twitter like all those crazy young kids are, and if I'm going to do an in-store appearance or I post something on my website, I tweet these followers, a word I don't like so much, and over 50,000 people go, like, 'Okay, I got it.'