Quotes from The Portable Henry Rollins

Henry Rollins ·  301 pages

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“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, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“I'll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable 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, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“I get tired of talking when I want to be silent.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“When she comes
She pulls you close
She breathes in short bursts
Her eyes close
Her head tilts back
Her mouth opens slightly
Her thighs turn to steel, and then melt
She is perfect
And you feel like you are everything.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins



“Sometimes I would get invited to a party or to go out to dinner by one
of them and I would decline. Part of me wanted to go, but those kind of
outings always made me feel even more alienated than usual. Hearing them
talk made me feel lonely and hateful at the same time. Lonely because I
didn't fit in, never did. When I was reminded, it hurt. And hateful
because it reaffirmed what I already knew, that I was alone and on the
outside.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“A rose trapped inside a fist.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable 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, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“Whenever I get dumped, I nail the door shut so that no one can come inside, get a towel and clip it around my neck so it's like a Superman cape, take off my shoes so I can slide across the room, and...get a fake mic, like a celery stick or a pen, and I play any record that features the vocalist Ronnie James Dio. And you can just pretend you're Dio, because on every album he does, he has minimum one, usually three, *EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT!*- songs. And if you wanna point like Dio, it's a three-finger point. (heavy metal voice) 'The exit is that way. Evil LURKS! Evil lurks in twilight! Dances in the DARK! Evil woman! Just WALK AWAY!”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“Damn, I was lonely that autumn. I wished for a girl I could hang out with. I never
really did anything to meet girls, too shy, too fucked up. Autumn makes
me think of women.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins



“I see walking bombs on the street
Hearts not beating, but ticking”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“She touches me
The jungle lights up with incinerating fire
Looks like a flaming serpent
I look into her eyes
I see a movie flickering
Car crashes
People kicking corpses
Men ripping their tracheas out and shaking them at the sky
I think to myself:
I don’t want to survive this one
I want to burn up in the wreckage
Cooking flesh in the jungle”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“I think to myself:
I don't want to survive this one
I want to burn up in the wreckage”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“I will never let you know how much you hurt me
No, I will never tell you
The lasts few months have sent me into myself
It's not easy to forget you
Time is healing me
I keep my feelings to myself, it helps
I don't understand you or your kind
I end up getting myself messed up
I can't take any more beatings like this”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins


“She lit my soul and inhaled deeply
Flicking my ashes occasionally.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins



About the author

Henry Rollins
Born place: in Washington, D.C., The United States
Born date February 13, 1961
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“When a man seats before his eyes the bronze face of his helmet and steps off from the line of departure, he divides himself, as he divides his ‘ticket,’ in two parts. One part he leaves behind. That part which takes delight in his children, which lifts his voice in the chorus, which clasps his wife to him in the sweet darkness of their bed. “That half of him, the best part, a man sets aside and leaves behind. He banishes from his heart all feelings of tenderness and mercy, all compassion and kindness, all thought or concept of the enemy as a man, a human being like himself. He marches into battle bearing only the second portion of himself, the baser measure, that half which knows slaughter and butchery and turns the blind eye to quarter. He could not fight at all if he did not do this.” The men listened, silent and solemn. Leonidas at that time was fifty-five years old. He had fought in more than two score battles, since he was twenty; wounds as ancient as thirty years stood forth, lurid upon his shoulders and calves, on his neck and across his steel-colored beard. “Then this man returns, alive, out of the slaughter. He hears his name called and comes forward to take his ticket. He reclaims that part of himself which he had earlier set aside. “This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath. “What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy’s spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell? “When a man joins the two pieces of his ticket and sees them weld in union together, he feels that part of him, the part that knows love and mercy and compassion, come flooding back over him. This is what unstrings his knees. “What else can a man feel at that moment than the most grave and profound thanksgiving to the gods who, for reasons unknowable, have spared his life this day? Tomorrow their whim may alter. Next week, next year. But this day the sun still shines upon him, he feels its warmth upon his shoulders, he beholds about him the faces of his comrades whom he loves and he rejoices in their deliverance and his own.” Leonidas paused now, in the center of the space left open for him by the troops. “I have ordered pursuit of the foe ceased. I have commanded an end to the slaughter of these whom today we called our enemies. Let them return to their homes. Let them embrace their wives and children. Let them, like us, weep tears of salvation and burn thank-offerings to the gods. “Let no one of us forget or misapprehend the reason we fought other Greeks here today. Not to conquer or enslave them, our brothers, but to make them allies against a greater enemy. By persuasion, we hoped. By coercion, in the event. But no matter, they are our allies now and we will treat them as such from this moment. “The Persian!”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae


“پیش از آنکه زمان آغاز شود خداوند همه‌چیزی را آکنده بود و مکان وجود نداشت. پدر برای آفریدن عالم می‌بایست به درون خود بازگردد تا خلائی پدید آورد و این غیبت خداوند مکان را به وجود آورد و در این مکان در هفت روز ستارگان، روشنایی، آب، گیاهان و جانوران و آدمی سر برکردند، اما چندان‌که زمین به سبب بیرون رفت ذات الهی پدیدار شد، زمینه پدید آمد سلطه دشمن خداوند یعنی گناه مساعد بود!”
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How many? Great heavens, earthling. I haven't the faintest idea.'

But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.'

I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that's a great many.'

But how many?'

What difference does it make? I know their names. I don't know how many there are. It's their names that matter.”
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