Quotes By Janis Joplin

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

You know, 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.

They're frauds, the whole goddamn hippie culture. They bitch about brainwashing from their parents and they do the same damn thing. I've never known one of those people who would tolerate any way of life but their own.

I don't believe in gate-crashing. The people aren't up there when I'm sweating on a stage at a festival, breaking my ass. You can get the money to buy a concert ticket, man. Sell your old lady, sell your dope. Look at me, man, I'm selling my heart.

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends. So Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

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

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.

You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow.

Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got.

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

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

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

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

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.

Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.

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

I'm one of those regular weird people.

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 bulls**t myself and not bulls**t anybody else.

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

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.