Literary Birthday – 13 February – Henry Rollins

Happy Birthday, Henry Rollins, born 13 February 1961.

Quotes

Life will not break your heart. It’ll crush it.
All my big heroes are literary, writers. I’d love to meet Jimmy Hendrix or John Coltrane, but I’d much rather meet Thomas Wolfe, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Words and books have always meant a lot to me. That someone can take words and string them together to where they will move me is just a hell of a thing. It’s amazing to me; more amazing to me than music or painting. It’s always been the written word or the spoken word, like a great lecture or a great lyric, or a great poem. To me it’s just amazing. And I always aspire toward capturing that, or my version of it.
Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowded room with boring people than I feel on my own.
I think of the thrill of an intelligent woman talking just to me.
Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.
Love heals scars love left.
Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.
In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.
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.
If you paid Americans a living wage, they would be able to pay for products made by Americans in America.
People are best on records and books because you can turn them off or put them back on the shelf.
Do it or don’t. It’s amazing how many things in life are that easy.
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.
In the worst of times the best among us never lose their moral compass, and that is how they emerge relatively unscathed.
In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks.
Someday, I would like to go home. The exact location of this place, I don’t know, but someday I would like to go.

Henry Rollins is an American musician, writer, journalist, publisher, actor, television and radio host, spoken word artist, comedian, and activist. His books include Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag, Black Coffee Blues, and Solipsist.

Source for quotes