Janis Joplin
On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Money
On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Strength
Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.Collection: Intelligence
My father wouldn't get us a TV, he wouldn't allow a TV in the house.Collection: Dad
Playing is just about feeling. Playing isn't necessarily about misery. Playing isn't necessarily about happiness. But it's just about letting yourself feel all those things that you have already on the inside of you, but you're all the time trying to push them aside because they don't make for polite conversation or something.Collection: Happiness
Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.
I'm one of those regular weird people.
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.
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.
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.
As it gets closer and more probable, being a star is really losing its meaning.
Who you are is what you settle for, you know?
I won't quit to become someone's old lady.
Rock on out.
I can't talk about my singing. I'm inside it. How can you describe something you're inside of?
I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought.
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.
You know why we're stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don't let themselves feel things.
Guess what, I might be the first hippie pinup girl.
If I hold back, I'm no good. I'm no good. I'd rather be good sometimes, than holding back all the time.
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.
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.
Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.
You got to get it while you can.
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.
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow.Collection: Motivational
The more you live, the less you die.Collection: Life And Death
I just want to feel as much as I can, it's what soul is all about.Collection: Soul
Don't compromise your self, you're all you got.Collection: Self
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.Collection: Play
Freedom is just another word for when you have NOTHING left to lose.Collection: Left
If you've got a today, don't wear it tomorrow. Tomorrow never happens. It's all the same day.Collection: Wisdom
You know you've got it, if it makes you feel good.Collection: Feel Good
You are what you settle for.Collection: Settling
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.Collection: Loving Someone
As good as you've been to this world is as good as it's gonna be right back to you.Collection: Philosophy
I think I think too much. That's why I drink!Collection: Thinking
Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.Collection: Waiting
Singing, it's like it's like loving somebody, it's a supreme emotional and physical experience.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Fighting
When you hold somebody, you gotta hold them like it's the last minute of your life.Collection: Advice
It used to make me unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned how to make feeling work for me... I don't know, I just want to feel as much as I can, it's what 'soul' is all about.Collection: Feelings
It's hard to be free but when it works, it's worth it!Collection: Working It
It's not what isn't, it's what you wish was that makes unhappiness.Collection: Wish
I would trade all my tomorrow's for one single yesterday.Collection: Yesterday
You can feel all things at once, so why not wear all things at once?Collection: Why Not
I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me.Collection: Eye
I believe the only people who truly experience and test the application of equality are twins.Collection: Believe