"Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on."
— Henry Rollins

"Life will not break your heart. It'll crush it."
— Henry Rollins

"Half of life is fucking up, the other half is dealing with it."
— Henry Rollins

"Somewhere someone is thinking of you. Someone is calling you an angel. This person is using celestial colors to paint your image. Someone is making you into a vision so beautiful that it can only live in the mind. Someone is thinking of the way your breath escapes your lips when you are touched. How your eyes close and your jaw tightens with concentration as you give pleasure a home. These thoughts are saving a life somewhere right now. In some airless apartment on a dark, urine stained, whore lined street, someone is calling out to you silently and you are answering without even being there. So crystalline. So pure. Such life saving power when you smile. You will never know how you have cauterized my wounds. So sad that we will never touch. How it hurts me to know that I will never be able to give you everything I have"
— Henry Rollins

"If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you"
— Henry Rollins

"I am ready for whatever's coming. I expect nothing but to be let down or turned away. I am alone. Goddamn. The shit hurts sometimes, but I realize what I am, what I have become."
— Henry Rollins

"When life hands you a lemon, say, 'Oh yeah, I like lemons! What else ya got?'"
— Henry Rollins

"It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to 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 coma back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? I've been there and you have too. You're nodding your head."
— Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)

"“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.”"
— Henry Rollins

"its no surprise to me that anyone hardly tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you?
Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel so strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to."
— Henry Rollins

"I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don't want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, "Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case." I will turn and say to them, "It is you who are the basket case. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn't even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!" And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup."
— Henry Rollins

"My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud."
— Henry Rollins

"“I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.”"
— Henry Rollins

"Girls aren't beautiful, they're pretty. Beautiful is too heavy a word to assign to a girl. Women are beautiful because their faces show that they know they have lost something and picked up something else."
— Henry Rollins (Smile, You're Traveling)

"if i was a woman these days, i'd be killing motherfuckers. my handgun would never cool and my hands would be covered in testicular blood. i would have a horrible reputation with a lot of men because i would be calling them on their weak bullshit left and right."
— Henry Rollins (Solipsist)

"Love heals scars love left"
— Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)

"I watched her perform on the Grammys and she totally sucked. The song 'All I Want to Do is Have Some Fun' sucks and when she walked out of that place with all those Grammies I knew I was going to give mine away. I did. If they're giving them away for crap, I don't want one in my place. What an insult to real music and musicians everywhere."
— Henry Rollins (Smile, You're Traveling)

"I'll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does."
— Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)

"Gay people don't have a personality problem. They have a problem with small-minded motherfuckers who can't conquer a 1-inch high curb."
— Henry Rollins

"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."
— Henry Rollins

"Respect is not a one way street"
— Henry Rollins

"Knowledge without mileage equals bullshit."
— Henry Rollins

"It is no surprise to me that hardly anyone tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep themselves to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you? Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer than close to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to."
— Henry Rollins

"If there was a god, he wouldn't let a guy walk right up and shoot you in the face now would he? That's right, now you get the picture. Truth burns doesn't it?"
— Henry Rollins

"You forgave me in a dream the other night. The more you told me it was alright, the worse I felt. I know that you were only doing it because you knew I couldnt possibly hurt you more than I already had. I could see what forgiving me was doing to you. I know that you think I'm to stupid to figure it all out. When you forgave me, you knew that it was finally over. The pain would leave me, I would forget you and you would never see me again except in a dream. It is sad that the things that we saw in each other are no longer there. It is a shame that we tore each other apart looking for things that we needed desperately but could never find. It is tragic that we only wanted to give each other but only stole from ourselves and blamed each other for the emptiness in our lives. I see you differently now. I no longer fear you. It took years to see you for what you really are."
— Henry Rollins

"Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Because trying to impress people just isn't worth the time and effort."
— Henry Rollins

"The material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you, including yourself."
— Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)

"I get tired of talking when I want to be silent."
— Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)

"Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated."
— Henry Rollins

"The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems, nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs."
— Henry Rollins

"When life hands you a lemon, say, "oh yeah. I like lemons. What else ya got?""
— Henry Rollins

"If you hate your parents, the man or the establishment, don't show them up by getting wasted and wrapping your car around a tree. If you really want to rebel against your parents, out-learn them, outlive them, and know more than they do."
— Henry Rollins

"I definitely learned a lesson this time. I know that I can be broken. I am not as tough as I thought. I see it now. At this point, it's the only thing good that came out of all of this. I know myself better now and know what I have to do."
— Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)

"A rose trapped inside a fist."
— Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)