Best 48 quotes of Janis Joplin on MyQuotes

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.

All any girl really wants is just love and a man. But what man can put up with a rock-n-roll star?

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.

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

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

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

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.

Don't go looking for Mr. Right. Look for Mr. Right Now.

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

Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I'd rather have ten years of superhypermost than live to be seventy sitting in some goddamn chair watching TV.

If I hold back, I'm no good. I'm no good. I'd rather be good sometimes, than holding back all the time.

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

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.

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.

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.

I love being a star more than life itself.

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?

I'm tired of all these hippie jack-offs

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz - My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

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

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.

The older the grapes, sweeter the wine.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

You know why we're stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don't let themselves feel things.

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