Janis Joplin Quotes & Sayings

#1. 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

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

Janis Joplin

#3. Maybe my audiences can enjoy my music more if they think I'm destroying myself.

Janis Joplin

#4. Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

Janis Joplin

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

Janis Joplin

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. If someone comes along, gonna give you some love and affection, I say get it while you can.

Janis Joplin

#10. You are what you settle for. You are only as much as you settle for

Janis Joplin

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone.

Janis Joplin

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

Janis Joplin

#18. I think I think too much. That's why I drink!

Janis Joplin

#19. 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

#20. The more you live, the less you die.

Janis Joplin

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

Janis Joplin

#22. 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

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

Janis Joplin

#24. In my insides, it really hurts if someone doesn't like me. It's silly.

Janis Joplin

#25. Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.

Janis Joplin

#26. People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards.

Janis Joplin

#27. 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

#28. It's hard to be free but when it works, it's worth it!

Janis Joplin

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

Janis Joplin

#30. 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

#31. Never compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

Janis Joplin

#32. You can feel all things at once, so why not wear all things at once?

Janis Joplin

#33. 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

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

Janis Joplin

#35. 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

#36. I believe the only people who truly experience and test the application of equality are twins.

Janis Joplin

#37. Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer.

Janis Joplin

#38. When you hold somebody, you gotta hold them like it's the last minute of your life.

Janis Joplin

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

Janis Joplin

#40. Singing, it's like it's like loving somebody, it's a supreme emotional and physical experience.

Janis Joplin

#41. You know you've got it, if it makes you feel good.

Janis Joplin

#42. Guess what, I might be the first hippie pinup girl.

Janis Joplin

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

Janis Joplin

#44. I won't quit to become someone's old lady.

Janis Joplin

#45. I love being a star more than life itself.

Janis Joplin

#46. I'd rather not sing than sing quiet.

Janis Joplin

#47. Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

Janis Joplin

#48. 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

#49. 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

#50. I'm not really thinking much ... Just sort of, trying to feel.

Janis Joplin

#51. 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

#52. I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me.

Janis Joplin

#53. 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

#54. 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

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

Janis Joplin

#56. I'm tired of all these hippie jack-offs

Janis Joplin

#57. You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow.

Janis Joplin

#58. 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