Ed Rollins Quotes

The idea that any performer type is owed anything is a joke to me.

I love being a storyteller. I love telling stories.

I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.

If I'm in L.A. for longer than 20 days, I'm looking for work, because I don't do vacations.

A country that has been through as much as Vietnam has to have some crazy music somewhere.

America's foreign policy lacks the backbone to do the right thing in Afghanistan - which is leave.

As a young person, I was on the road playing music, so I was getting new environments shoved in my face whether I wanted them or not.

I'm of the opinion that the Democrats have the ideas I agree with more often than not. Reenergizing the middle class and giving people a break.

As the middle class is predated upon with an ever greater malicious intensity, their children stand to lose more and harder than their parents ever did.

I'm terrified of motorcycles. I've been on one a couple of times. I did not like it.

When people make my country look bad, I can't stand it.

You can pass all the gun legislation you want. None of it will make me feel any more or less safe than I do right at this moment.

I have healthy disagreements with political parties I'm not aligned with, but I don't think it should be to the point where we're cursing and trying to strangle each other.

Every politician, every president gets votes by getting people that don't like him to like him. That's why politicians are slippery: because they talk out of both sides of their mouth.

I don't believe it mattered to Timothy McVeigh who was president or who his congressional representative was when he blew up the Murrah Building in 1995.

I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was up early watching television and watched the announcement. I didn't understand what the word 'assassinated' meant.

When I am in Africa, I realize I don't know much, have not seen much, and there's a lot to be done.

Unsurprisingly, Nelson Mandela had and still has many detractors.

If an American company has a drop of patriotic blood coursing through its system, then surely it would set up in America and employ Americans, right?

If it's a man's world, as they say, then men, your world is a poorly run carnage fest.

Juan Williams is a very sharp guy.

Luckily for me, I genuinely like my audience. They really are a good bunch.

My father did not rock. He just earned and hated. Don't end up like this man.

No one should die when they're 50.

Rock n' roll unchained a nation and revolutionized radio and the record industry, not to mention the motion picture business.

Sarah Palin embarrasses herself almost immediately upon opening her mouth to speak or upon moving her fingers to send messages to her dull flock.

Shirley Sherrod seems like a good and dedicated person.

Technically speaking, there is no music whatsoever on a CD. Lots of information, but no music.

The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.

This is my own little rock theory: In my mind, Nirvana slayed the hair bands. They shot the top off the poodles.

Trayvon Martin did not need to die.

Trying to write music, be in a band and keep it all happening is one of the hardest, morale-destroying, heartbreaking things you will ever try to do - and that's when it's going well.

The kid who throws his spaghetti from the high chair onto his father's face, he's pushing back. He's sticking it to the man as he sees it. I like that. So that is punk.

I have been curious about Haiti for many years. The history of the country is as fascinating as it is turbulent.

Early spring is the time for vigorous change, a preparation for the heat-driven oppression that is to come.

I have been an XL fan of Devo since I was in high school in the 1970s. Their records only sound better with time.

I try to get myself up and moving as early as possible. Optimum is to be on the treadmill while it is still dark outside.

Pride is a thing that I have tried to abandon completely. Try as I might, pride still creeps into many of the things I do.

Scott Asheton was a brilliant drummer, a natural musician.

Adolescence is a plague on the senses.

Canadians are often a friendly bunch.

Castle Face Records, run by The Oh Sees main man, Johnny Dwyer is always worth checking in with.

Certainly, there are huge, multiplatinum bands whose singers command their audience's attention. Sadly, much of the time they have little to say.

Citizens United didn't work. Hey, Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Shellgame Adelson: Democracy trumps money sometimes.

Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.

Every single record I have is a fossil.

For me, jazz will always be the soundtrack of the civil rights movement.

A text conversation is a short exchange of often grossly truncated language that corresponds to a thought made all the more shallow by the process.

There's something about being under-rested and knowing that the situation is going to remain that way for quite some time that makes things more meaningful.

When you have to work with and exist amongst cynical, burned-out personnel on a set, it doesn't matter what you're shooting or how much you're being paid - it's not worth it.