Janis Joplin Quotes & Sayings

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. — Janis Joplin

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. — Janis Joplin

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. — Janis Joplin

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. — Janis Joplin

Why should I hold back now and sound mediocre, just so I can sound mediocre twenty years from now? — Janis Joplin

I had a lot of hurts and confusions. You know, it's hard when you're a kid to be different. You're all full of things, and you don't know that it's about. — Janis Joplin

People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards. — Janis Joplin

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

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

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? — Janis Joplin

If someone comes along, gonna give you some love and affection, I say get it while you can. — Janis Joplin

When everything is together - the band, me, the audience, it's boss! It's just like magic. — Janis Joplin

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

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. — Janis Joplin

You are what you settle for. — Janis Joplin

Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer. — Janis Joplin

The more you live, the less you die. — Janis Joplin

Don't you know that you're nothing more than a one night stand? — Janis Joplin

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. — Janis Joplin

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

I read a story about some old opera singer once, and when a guy asked her to marry him, she took him backstage after she had sung a real triumph, with all the people calling for her, asked, 'Do you think you could give me that?' That story hit me right, man. I know no guy ever made me feel as good as an audience. I'm really far into this now, really committed. Like, I don't think I'd go off the road for long now, for life with a guy no matter how good. Yeah, it's the truth. Scary thing to say though, isn't it? — 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. — Janis Joplin

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

On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone. — Janis Joplin

Tomorrow never happens. It's all the same fucking day, man. — Janis Joplin

There isn't going to be any turning point ... There isn't going to be any next-month-it'll-be-better, next fucking year, next fucking life. You don't have any time to wait for. You just got to look around you and say, "So this is it. This is really all there is to it. This little thing." Everybody needing such little things and they can't get them. Everybody needing just a little ... confidence from somebody else and they can't get it. Everybody, everybody fighting to protect their little feelings. Everybody, you know, like reaching out tentatively but drawing back. It's so shallow and seems so ... fucking ... it seems like such a shame. It's so close to being like really right and good and open and amorphous and giving and everything. But it's not. And it ain't gonna be.
September 1969
quoted in "The New Yorker" 9 August 1999 — Janis Joplin

You got to get it while you can — Janis Joplin

I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers, — Janis Joplin

On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone. — Janis Joplin

I want a bigger band with higher highs, a bigger ladder. And I want more bottom - I want an incredible amount of bottom. I want more noise. When I do a rock tune I want it to be so HUGE ... — Janis Joplin

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. — Janis Joplin

I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me. — Janis Joplin

Honey, if you've had your eye on a piece of talent and that chick down the road has been getting all the action, then you know what you gotta do ... Try A Little Bit Harder. — Janis Joplin

You can't stay in your home town and play because the two people will get tired of seeing you. — Janis Joplin

My business is to enjoy and have fun. And why not, if in the end everything will end, right? — Janis Joplin

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

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

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

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. — Janis Joplin

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

You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. — Janis Joplin

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

I'm tired of all these hippie jack-offs — Janis Joplin

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

I'm not really thinking much ... Just sort of, trying to feel. — Janis Joplin

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

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 ... — Janis Joplin

Never compromise yourself. You are all you've got. — Janis Joplin

The older the grapes, sweeter the wine. — Janis Joplin

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. — Janis Joplin

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable. — Janis Joplin

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

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

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

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? — Janis Joplin

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. — Janis Joplin

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

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. — Janis Joplin

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. — Janis Joplin

Guess what, I might be the first hippie pinup girl. — Janis Joplin

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

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

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

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. — Janis Joplin

I love being a star more than life itself. — Janis Joplin

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

Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything. — Janis Joplin

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

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

You are what you settle for. You are only as much as you settle for — Janis Joplin

I believe the only people who truly experience and test the application of equality are twins. — Janis Joplin

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

I'd rather not sing than sing quiet. — Janis Joplin

I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it — Janis Joplin

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. — Janis Joplin

I think I think too much. That's why I drink! — Janis Joplin

Hippies believe the world could be a better place. Beatniks believe things aren't going to get better and say the hell with it, stay stoned and have a good time. — Janis Joplin