Henry Rollins Trying Quotations

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.

When I'm off the road, and I can really control my diet down to the calorie, I juice seven days a week. Every afternoon, whatever I have at hand, beets, carrots, ginger, whatever. I juice, literally, every single day. And on the road, I try to find fresh juice wherever I can.

Try driving the streets of Los Angeles without seeing a billboard depicting a film with a lead actor holding a gun. It's almost as if guns are harmless props used to bring out the cheekbones and jawline of the screen star.

Trying to write music, be in a band and keep it all happening is one of the hardest, morale-destroying, heartbreaking things you will ever try to do - and that's when it's going well.

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.

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

I don't get a rush from anything. I did music as hard as I could. Acting for me at least, is a far more restrained performance than music. It requires a lot of skill and discipline. I'm not any good at it but I enjoy trying to be good at it.

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.

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.

Americans have been dumbed down to the point where more people watching 'American Idol' than listen to the state of the union address. And that's too bad. I'm not trying to take any bread out of the mouth of Simon Cowell, but if the president is speaking to the people of the United States, and people are going to watch 'American Idol,' that's sad.

It is amazing to hear grown-up people rationalize homophobia and discrimination. The lengths they go to trying to prove their points take reason to its breaking point.

I would never be innovative enough to "blaze my own trail," I'm just trying to be interesting. So I don't look to anyone else as far as inspiration.

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.

Stockholders are used to a certain kind of global capitalism. This version is very hard on the environment and very hard on people below a certain fiscal level. It is a calculated, systematic weakening of people. Many labour, a few benefit. Try talking about cleaning up the place with these people. The hostility is incredible.

I'm not trying to amass people in the streets. I just want them to be more aware.

It's hard to get along with people. As much as you try to like them and accept them as individuals, it becomes difficult because they keep getting out of line and wasting your time.

Sometimes it's not catastrophic. Sometimes you only come to the bottom of your coffee cup. Sometimes you have a good day. No one wants to know. No one wants to tell you about theirs either. You might somehow take it. Turn it against them. See the flaw. You always tell them the whole thing sucks. It keeps you alive. They figure if you're out there having a rotten time, everything's fine and you're doing your part. No one will ever try to take your bad times away from you but they'll come swarming for your happiness.

I like it better that people aren't throwing stuff at my face and trying to fight me on stage. Like in the '80s, it was just aggravating all the time. I have scars from cigars and cigarettes on me, Bic pens, burns from cigarette lighters, all that.

It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself.

Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold onto something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it’s so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn’t come back. You’re left so alone that you can’t explain.

The bible saw that can get a lot of people killed, so let's try and steer people away from that. I am not an expert on the bible. I am just saying.

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

I'm not trying to say I'm a big tough guy, I'm a typical American waist deep in this violent culture.

The ones who don't do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down.

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.

I don't try to be angry to prove something. I wouldn't try to intimidate you for any reason unless you were trying to intimidate me, and then I would show you that you can't do that to me.

I'm trying to be confrontational and direct. If I lack directness then I only have myself to blame because I lack the skills to make my point clear.

I'm not like paparazzi. I never force myself on anyone. I always ask, and some places offer money. And so I try and get these photos to give you, the viewer, a real look at what I was seeing.

I am very ambitious in a way, in that I'm not trying to be the richest guy or whatever. I just really like my work.