Top 94 Quotes & Sayings by Janis Joplin - Page 2

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'd rather not sing than sing quiet.

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

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

I love being a star more than life itself.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I'm tired of all these hippie jack-offs

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers.