Janis Joplin Quotes

Janis Joplin's words come across as raw, funny reflections on music, love, and self, great for those who like candid vibes.

38 quotes

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

2. I guess I'm the world's first hippie pinup girl.

3. Music's for grooving man, and music's not for puttin' yourself through bad changes, y'know? I mean, you don't have to go take anybody's shit, man, just to like music, y'know what I mean? You don't. So... so if you're getting' more shit than you deserve, you know what to do about it man. Y'know, it's just music. Music's... music's s'posed to be different than that.

4. Fourteen heart attacks and he had to die in my week. In MY week.

5. Honey, I love to go to parties, And I like to have a good time, But if it gets too pale after a while Honey and I start looking to find One good man.

6. One good man, Oh ain't much, honey ain't much, It's only everything...

7. An' I don't want much outa life, I never wanted a mansion in the south. I just-a want to find someone sincere Who'd treat me like he talks, One good man.

8. Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

9. 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.

10. Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

11. I'm one of those regular weird people.

12. It's gonna be a long hard drag, but we'll make it.

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

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

15. (When asked to define 'Acid Rock') I wouldn't know. I'm a juicer.

16. 'I think I think too much. That's why I drink!'

17. Well, I'm gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough. I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it, Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!

18. You know you got it if it makes you feel good.

19. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, Nothing don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free... And feeling good was easy, lord, when he sang the blues. You know feeling good was good enough for me, Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.

20. Janis knew more than I did about 'how it was', but she lacked enough armor for the inevitable hassles. She was open and spontaneous enough to get her heart trampled with a regularity that took me thirty years to experience or understand. On the various occasions when we were together, she seemed to be holding in something she thought I might not want to hear, like older people do when they hear kids they love saying with absolute youthful confidence, 'Oh, that'll never happen to me.' Sometimes you know you can't tell them how it is, they have to find out for themselves. Janis felt like an old soul, a wisecracking grandmother whom everybody loved to visit. When I was with her, I often felt like a part of her distant family, a young upstart relative who was still too full of her own sophistry to hear wisdom. Did we compliment each other? Yes, but not often enough. ~ Grace Slick

21. Wow, that's heavy. ~ 'Mama' Cass Elliot, caught on camera mouthing this at the Monterey Pop Festival.

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

23. Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer.

24. 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.

25. I'm a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything. It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned to make that feeling work for me.

26. All of a sudden, someone threw me in front of this rock and roll band. And I decided then and there that was it. I never wanted to do anything else.

27. You are what you settle for.

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

29. 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...

30. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

37. The more you live, the less you die.

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