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.

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.

When I sing, I feel like when you're first in love. It's more than sex. It's that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it's gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills.

Life is too damn short and [screwed] up to go through it silently loving someone and never telling them how you feel. [Screw] the consequences, [screw] the implications of the actions, to hell with it all... whatever happens as a result is better than the nothingness that is inevitable with silence.

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

At my concerts most of the chicks are looking for liberation, they think I'm gonna show 'em how to do it.

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