Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

I started out to be a person on the street, just like everybody else. I didn't start out to be a singer. But I got sort of swept up in this singing thing, and after I got involved in it it got really important to me if I was good or not.

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

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.

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

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

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.