Henry Rollins Quotes

A genius is always on duty; even his dreams are tax deductible.

I'm a work horse. I like to work. I always did. I think that there is such a thing as energy, creation overflowing. And I always felt that I have this great energy and it was bound to sort of burst at the seams, so that my work automatically took its place with a mind like mine. I've never had a day when I didn't want to work. I've never had a day like that. And I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy. I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working. ... In my studio I'm as happy as a cow in her stall.

I'm catching up. I'm satisfied with the show. I think I want to get better and better and keep building. It took a while to figure out how to do it. I didn't know how it was gonna go. I was just like, "I better book a show and just see what happens."

Because it's so empowering, I want people to think about being entrepreneurial regardless. They don't have to start companies, but that's what makes them great employees, that's what makes them great citizens.

Creativity allows people to be effective.

No matter when, at whatever moment, if she were asked what she was thinking about she could reply quite correctly - one thing, her happiness and her unhappiness.

Think inside the work - outside the work

I am happiest when I am working though, when I am being creative. I realized at a very young age what I loved doing. I think it is so important for people to pursue the things that they love and not give up on their dreams.

I always have a few ideas that are percolating, and then after I've finished a book and it's a year later, and things are sort of festering and things are disgusting in my house and I have to get back to work, whatever project I keep thinking about is the one I end up working on. Sort of a very simple process of elimination.

Legendary innovators like Franklin, Snow, and Darwin all possess some common intellectual qualities—a certain quickness of mind, unbounded curiosity—but they also share one other defining attribute. They have a lot of hobbies.

...clatter of a typwriter suggests that you're actually building something.

The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing.

My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line.

I think that most of my writer friends are really compulsive. I think that's great. It's wonderful for them. It's just not my bag. It's not the way I work. But again, it's probably why my friend has ten books out and I have two.

Joy of life... depends upon a certain spontaneity in regard to sex. Where sex is repressed, only work remains, and a gospel of work for work's sake never produced any work worth doing.

The power of work, and the power of creativity can be your salvation.

The opposite of play is not work. It's depression.

Some scientists find, or so it seems, that they get their best ideas when smoking; others by drinking coffee or whisky. Thus there is no reason why I should not admit that some may get their ideas by observing, or by repeating observations.

I cannot face with comfort the idea of life without work; work and the free play of the imagination are for me the same thing, I take no pleasure in anything else.

About my method of work: first it’s the state of mind—Elation (joy).

We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.

When I'm creatively solving problems, I'm in my sweet spot, and nothing can take me out of that joyful present.

After fifty years of living, it occurs to me that the most significant thing that people do is go to work, whether it is to go to work on their novel or at the assembly plant or fixing somebody's teeth.

If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one.

I'm not a very happy person," I told him."But sometimes I can trick myself into thinking I am.