Stay Fanatic!!! Hectic Expectorations For The Music Obsessive Quotes

“Nothing stays the same. Experience has a way of turning on you. You see and feel so much and then at a certain point, life starts to repeat. This is the start of wisdom and having “seen it all before.” This is when the true beauty/cruelty of life makes its presence known. This is when you go from being a film you don’t know the ending of, to being the star, director and screenwriter. I think there’s a danger to that. It’s why I try to keep at least some aspects of my life unplanned. You only get so many years before you become too good at what you do, to be all that good at it. It’s what happens when all the lights get turned on.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“Reality has always bored me senseless. It drains my energy. Many years ago, I realized I was going to process life though a music purification system. It worked, too. When I listen to music, read or write about music, think about music, everything gets better. Music allows me to travel in my mind. We spend a good part of our lives in places we don’t want to be in and with people we don’t want to be around. I’m trying to keep all that to a minimum.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“I met a woman around the corner from the hotel who owns a bar on Essex. We talked for awhile. She used to see Johnny Thunders play whenever she could. She said that sometimes he was too messed up to do the show and the venue would kick him out. She and her friends would sit with him outside and he would play for them. Can you imagine?! That’s a quintessential NYC experience. It’s what makes this city so great.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“It’s the person who tells you they listen to a lot of different music with an almost resigned sigh of futility that you want to pay attention to because they know that at best, they’ll only hear a small part of a tiny drop in the great ocean of music.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“Young adulthood afforded me a lot of time on my own. Sometimes on a night off from work, I would park my car in a supermarket lot and just sit there, listening to tapes on my battery powered, one speaker Norelco. That sounds lonely but it was really cool, actually. It was all I needed. I pretty much do the same thing now but with slightly better playback.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“For me, many albums are much more than a collection of songs. They’re testaments to the courage to live above the minimum requirements of merely getting by.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“There are records I play like when someone goes to the temple and spins the prayer wheel. Like The Crack by the Ruts, which is a great record anyway but sometimes I play it just so the room is filled with it, so the air can’t say it doesn’t exist, so the walls must acknowledge it.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“My idea of the show is that it’s a war time broadcast. We are at war against stations who applaud timid, unadventurous programming. We are at war against mediocre and uninspired music. Our enemies are many. All the “presenters” on the radio who dial in their shows with not an ounce of Fanatic zeal or love of music and the ever more corporate lean of so many stations are but a few examples.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“I like listening to old music and collecting the odd artifact from those times but I can’t just stay in one time period for too long. For me, that’s leaning too far back into a couch and recounting war stories to your vet friends because they know what you know. That’s basically saying that it’s all over and now you’re just going to recline ever further into the decaying echo of the past. No way, Fanatic. That’s surrender and I can’t do it.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“As you conform, depression can get you. Music is the literal soundtrack of emancipation from the depressing straightjacket of normality.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“My records are good friends. They’re an army. Standing straight, in rows, ready to go. Prepared to neutralize sadness and the sometimes crushing pointlessness of almost every pursuit. My heart will not break because my records have built a wall around it.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“Alone in cities all over the world. My secret happiness. No one recognizes me. I walk invisibly amongst the species. I wish this night would last forever or that I could live forever in it. It’s all I need. In these dark hours, I command time and live life, it’s not living me. Fanatic.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“Without awe, life is flatline.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“don’t need to be with anyone, don’t want someone to travel with or talk to. This is all I need. The simplicity of it holds great appeal. I’ve found the right combination. Music, the note pad, coffee and being alone at night. Good to go. Doing this all over the world is as good as it gets.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive

“Hours ago, I was walking around. I found a supermarket where I bought some water, and I got that feeling that often arrives when I’m out in the world. It’s as close as I get to happiness. It’s a rare feeling but it sometimes hits me when I’m alone, on the streets, just walking around. I feel free. When I was walking through the heat, the sweat rolling down my sides, I knew I was right. I was right to come out here. Right to be on my own. Right to be a total Fanatic and music obsessive.”
― Henry Rollins, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1: Hectic Expectorations for the Music Obsessive