Janis Joplin Quotes

“All of a sudden, someone threw me in front of this rock and roll band. And I decided then and there that was it. I never wanted to do anything else.”

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

“As it gets closer and more probable, being a star is really losing its meaning.”

“Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.”

“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.”

“Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin. Now, they are so subtle, they can milk you with two notes. They can make you feel like they told you the whole universe. But I don't know that yet. All I got now is strength. Maybe if I keep singing, maybe I'll get it.”

“Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got.”

“Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.”

“Guess what, I might be the first hippie pinup girl.”

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

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

“I have to have the 'umph'. I've got to feel it, because if it's not getting through to me, the audience sure as hell aren't going to feel it either.”

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

“I think I think too much. That's why I drink!”

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

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

“I'm a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything. It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned to make that feeling work for me.”

“I'm one of those regular weird people.”

“I've been looking around, and I noticed something: how much you really need to be loved. Ambition isn't just a desperate quest for positions or money. It's just love – lots of love.”

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

“If you've got a today, don't wear it tomorrow. Tomorrow never happens. It's all the same day.”

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

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

“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.”

“On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.”

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

“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.”

“The more you live, the less you die.”

“Tomorrow never happens. It’s all the same f*cking day, man.”

“Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.”