Janis Joplin
I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Rocks
The older the grapes, sweeter the wine.Collection: Wine
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.” – Janis JoplinCollection: Lonely
I'd rather have ten years of superhypermost than live to be seventy sitting in some goddamn chair watching TV.Collection: Years
Don't you know that you're nothing more than a one night stand?Collection: Night
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.Collection: Couple
Distance cannot kill this relationship. Time cannot breakdown anything we have. This is a relationship that I am ready to sacrifice and stand up for.Collection: Distance
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.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Hippie
You are what you settle for. You are only as much as you settle for.Collection: Settling
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.Collection: Beautiful
You better not compromise yourself, it's all you've got.Collection: Honesty
My business is to enjoy and have fun. And why not, if in the end everything will end, right?Collection: Fun
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?Collection: Mad
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.Collection: Hurt
In my insides, it really hurts if someone doesn't like me. It's silly.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Men
I'd rather not sing than sing quiet.Collection: Passion
I'm not really thinking much... Just sort of, trying to feel.Collection: Thinking
I'm tired of all these hippie jack-offsCollection: Hippie
If someone comes along, gonna give you some love and affection, I say get it while you can.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: Essence
People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards.Collection: People
I can't talk about my singing; I'm inside it. How can you describe something you're inside of?Collection: Singing
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.Collection: Texas
I love being a star more than life itself.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Moving
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?Collection: Real
All any girl really wants is just love and a man. But what man can put up with a rock-n-roll star?Collection: Girl
Why should I hold back now and sound mediocre, just so I can sound mediocre twenty years from now?Collection: Years
Don't go looking for Mr. Right. Look for Mr. Right Now.Collection: Mr Right
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.Collection: Mouths
At least we know we tend to be afraid. If you object to my plural noun, I'll retract it.Collection: Nouns
Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz - My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.Collection: Porsche
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.Collection: Eye
Maybe my audiences can enjoy my music more if they think I'm destroying myself.Collection: Thinking
You can't stay in your home town and play because the two people will get tired of seeing you.Collection: Home
Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer.Collection: Humorous
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.Collection: Mother
I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over itCollection: Song
At my concerts most of the chicks are looking for liberation, they think I'm gonna show 'em how to do it.Collection: Thinking
When everything is together - the band, me, the audience, it's boss! It's just like magic.Collection: Boss