Famous Quotes & Sayings

Janis Joplin Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 77 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Janis Joplin.

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Famous Quotes By Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin Quotes 2072209

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 424967

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 2253386

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 822929

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1896331

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 384614

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 567620

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 2137196

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1243382

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 868647

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1428120

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1050392

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 895313

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 378205

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 458876

You are what you settle for. — Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin Quotes 2257187

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1042855

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 955529

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 827162

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1449107

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 383196

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 2057170

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1301415

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1067639

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1453106

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 2252139

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1494561

You got to get it while you can — Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin Quotes 1520043

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1167363

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1546641

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1628225

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1405117

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1640452

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1399686

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1726520

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 2214277

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1769344

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1842530

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1849836

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1877485

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 2163915

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 2099237

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 2065209

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1896574

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1969594

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1983604

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 2032347

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 875603

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 248748

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 253568

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 255479

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 331457

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 334261

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 340536

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 486836

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 513422

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 531517

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 627964

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 691302

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 692910

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 709220

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 719316

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1346871

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 919736

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 946358

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 986195

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1007112

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1079930

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1100393

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1114373

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1129962

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 127689

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1182333

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1251642

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1289921

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1303332

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

Janis Joplin Quotes 1337848

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