Henry Rollins Quotes

You can't be the vulnerable, transparent, raw person required to be an artist, and then cover that stuff up and meet the world with some kind of armor on. It just doesn't go.

I've got a long list of things I consider to be selling out. But amongst that list, one of them is when you make art without putting your guard down.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say 'I' into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.

There is no seam between my songs and myself-they really are me. It's not like I'm performing; I'm just singing stuff that I really believe.

You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.

I just love actors, and I've always loved actors. I empathize with their job. Everyone thinks it's easy, and it ain't. To be that vulnerable and brave on camera is tough. The more they reveal themselves, the more we love them, but there's a lot of truth in what they're showing.

Some people are attracted to vulnerability. From my very first album, I've been vulnerable. I've always given parts of me, parts of my life - good, bad, ugly. I've never put up this image as a super-thug. Also, some people just like the music.

I think my favorite artists are honest artists, and as a songwriter, that's what you have to do. You have to be willing to put yourself out there in a really vulnerable way.

It's really not easy to be an artist. It's not easy to put yourself out there and be honest. I'm making things that are really happening to me, and it's not easy to share that with the world.

I'm never nervous about being vulnerable with my songwriting because my favorite artists are ones that are vulnerable. I want people to feel like they know me.

Sometimes I think it's the responsibility of the artist to reveal a little more of themselves.

There's things that I say that people wouldn't say. And just putting across my vulnerability as a person in my music as well. A lot of people wouldn't do that, everyone wants to be hard.

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

My whole act is confession.

I'm more comfortable revealing myself than hiding behind metaphors. I respond to artists who reveal something of themselves.

Having grown up so familiar with creating a pleasing facade, I now end up compelled to reveal things inside and say, 'Okay, now you really see me. Do you still love me?' And then it's never enough; it always has to be total self-revelation.

Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.

To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this.

I think I have great responsibility, and when I do my music, when I try to relate to my audience, I just try to do it in an honest fashion, you know, just try to be as earnest as possible and sometime it may be self-effacing. Sometimes it may be finger-pointing. Sometimes it may be beautiful, and sometime it may be ugly.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

When I write, what I long for is not more realism or fiction but more courage. That's what I always find myself short on and what I have to struggle to achieve in order that the work might live.

I think every artist should follow their vision; their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for. That said though, I think also artists have, continuously good artists, have been good for their times.

Maybe I could have been good as a drawer if I had done it as much as I did writing, but it's more scary to draw. It's more revealing. You can't disguise yourself in drawing.

I feel what I sing, and I sing what I feel. Really, that's all I can do.