Janis Joplin Quotes

When you hold somebody, you gotta hold them like it's the last minute of your life.

I don't know what happened. I just exploded. I'd never sung like that before. I used to stand still and sing simple, but you can't sing like that in front of a rock band. You have to sing loud and move wild with all that in back of you. Now, I don't know how to perform any other way.

At least we know we tend to be afraid. If you object to my plural noun, I'll retract it.

I gotta go on doin' it the way I see it...I got no choice but to take it like I see it. I'm here to have a party while I'm on this earth...I'm gettin' it now, today. I don't even know where I'm gonna be twenty years from now, so I'm just gonna keep on rockin', cause if I start saving up bits and pieces of me...man, there ain't gonna be nothing left for Janis.

You got to get it while you can.

They asked me, How did you learn to sing the blues like that? How did you learn to sing that heavy? I just opened my mouth and that's what I sounded like. You can't make up something that you don't feel. I didn't make it up. I just opened my mouth and it existed.

Texas is OK if you want to settle down and do your own thing quietly, but it's not for outrageous people, and I was always outrageous.

Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz - My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

Singing, it's like it's like loving somebody, it's a supreme emotional and physical experience.

I can't talk about my singing; I'm inside it. How can you describe something you're inside of?

Don't compromise your self, you're all you got.

You better not compromise yourself, it's all you've got.

To be true to myself, to be the person that was on the inside of me, and not play games. That's what I'm trying to do mostly in the whole world, is not bullshit myself and not bullshit anybody else.

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

I won't quit to become someone's old lady.

If I hold back, I'm no good. I'm no good. I'd rather be good sometimes, than holding back all the time.

Freedom is just another word for when you have NOTHING left to lose.

Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.

My father wouldn't get us a TV, he wouldn't allow a TV in the house.

You're only as much as you settle for. If they settle for being somebody's dishwasher that's their own f***ing problem. If you don't settle for that and you keep fighting it, you know, you'll end up anything you want to be.

It used to make me unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned how to make feeling work for me... I don't know, I just want to feel as much as I can, it's what 'soul' is all about.

All my life I just wanted to be a beatnik. Meet all the heavies, get stoned, get laid, have a good time. That's all I ever wanted. Except I knew I had a good voice and I could always get a couple of beers off of it. All of a sudden someone threw me in this rock 'n' roll band. They threw these musicians at me, man, and the sound was coming from behind. The bass was charging me. And I decided then and there that that was it. I never wanted to do anything else. It was better than it had been with any man, you know. Maybe that's the trouble.

Maybe my audiences can enjoy my music more if they think I'm destroying myself.

I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought.

You know you've got it, if it makes you feel good.

You know why we're stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don't let themselves feel things.

After they see me, when their mothers are feeding them all that cashmere sweater and girdle ----- [expletive deleted by the New York Times], maybe they'll have a second thought - that they can be themselves and win.

Don't go looking for Mr. Right. Look for Mr. Right Now.

As good as you've been to this world is as good as it's gonna be right back to you.

All any girl really wants is just love and a man. But what man can put up with a rock-n-roll star?

I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers.

I'd rather not sing than sing quiet.

It's not what isn't, it's what you wish was that makes unhappiness.

I would trade all my tomorrow's for one single yesterday.

You are what you settle for. You are only as much as you settle for.

This whole thing that's happened to me, you see, this whole success thing..it hasn't yet really compromised the position that I took a long time ago in Texas, that was to be true to myself, to be the person that I...that was on inside of me and not play games.

In my insides, it really hurts if someone doesn't like me. It's silly.

You can feel all things at once, so why not wear all things at once?

I just want to feel as much as I can, it's what soul is all about.

Distance cannot kill this relationship. Time cannot breakdown anything we have. This is a relationship that I am ready to sacrifice and stand up for.

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That's what music is to me.” – Janis Joplin

Like most girls I'm always really self-conscious about do I look fat, if my legs are short, if I'm weird shaped, but when I go on stage, man, it never occurs to me. I think I look beautiful.

I'm just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?

I got treated very badly in Texas. They don't treat beatniks too good in Texas. Port Arthur people thought I was a beatnik, though they'd never seen one and neither had I.

If you can get them once, man, get them standing up when they should be sitting down, sweaty when they should be decorous, smile when they should be applauding politely-and I think you sort of switch on their brain, man, so that makes them say: 'Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.' Whoooooo! It's life. That's what rock and roll is for, turn that switch on, and man, it can all be.

It's hard to be free but when it works, it's worth it!

What we've had to do is learn to control success, put it in perspective, and not lose the essence of what we're doing - the music.