Henry Rollins Quotes

An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.

When the woman is attractive, is it an interesting picture, or is it the woman? I had a lot of headaches with that, which was why it was interesting. I don't think I always got it straight.

I can't tell you how many pictures I've missed just 'cause I've been so hell bent on getting the shot I think I want.

I don't think about what camera I should use that much. I just pick up the one that looks nicest on the day.

To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.

A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

I'm always working on something. I wish I had more time for free-thinking and brainstorming new ideas. That's not to say my mind doesn't wander, but I find myself wishing for more of that kind of time.

I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good at it.

It's better not to read your reviews. Just go and do the thing... it would drive you crazy otherwise.

Quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That's not quality, that's a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy-the tone range isn't right and things like that-but they're far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. It's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention.

There's no particular class of photograph that I think is any better than any other class. I'm always and forever looking for the image that has spirit! I don't give a damn how it got made.

If I'm really working on something, writing or painting or really concentrating, I don't even think about brushing my hair.

Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.

People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.

A photograph is just a tiny slice of a subject. A piece of them in a moment. It seems presumptuous to think you can get more than that.

Photography was the only thing that mattered in my life and I gave it everything.

I don't photograph life as it is, but life as I would like it to be.

A thing is not what you say it is or what you photograph it to be or what you paint it to be or what you sculpt it to be. Words, photographs, paintings, and sculptures are symbols of what you see, think, and feel things to be, but they are not the things themselves.

I don't even think about the word. But I do have certain things where I just go, "Aaaaahhh," irritatingly boring and insistent because I want it to look that way and I can do it - I don't even know if you'd call it passion or obsession. Obsession, possibly, but I really love what I do.

Thought expands, but paralyzes; action animates, but narrows.

Whether we like to admit it or not, as artists, we do project our own worldview on to what we do.

An addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production.

I don't think you need to be so result-oriented when you're trying to define the success of an art work. I think we can allow some unpredictability.

I think writers, by nature, are more observers instead of participators. I am no where near as much of that as Bob Dylan. But when your antenna is up you are pretty fixated and there is not much room in your life for anything else.

The important thing is not the camera but the eye.