Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was known for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and “electric” stage presence.
Joplin dazzled listeners with her fierce and uninhibited musical style. Inspirational Janis Joplin quotes will challenge the way you think, and help guide you through any life experience.
If you’re searching for positive quotes by musicians that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes by Jimmy Buffett, best Miles Davis quotes and greatest Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart quotes.
Famous Janis Joplin Quotes
Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable. – Janis Joplin
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
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. – Janis Joplin
The more you live, the less you die. – Janis Joplin
You better not compromise yourself, it’s all you’ve got. – Janis Joplin
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
In my insides, it really hurts if someone doesn’t like me. It’s silly. – Janis Joplin
People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards. – Janis Joplin
You are what you settle for. You are only as much as you settle for. – Janis Joplin
Why should I hold back now and sound mediocre, just so I can sound mediocre twenty years from now? – Janis Joplin
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
Maybe my audiences can enjoy my music more if they think I’m destroying myself. – Janis Joplin
I’d rather not sing than sing quiet. – Janis Joplin
At least we know we tend to be afraid. If you object to my plural noun, I’ll retract it. – Janis Joplin
Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz – My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. – Janis Joplin
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
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
You got to get it while you can. – Janis Joplin
I can’t talk about my singing; I’m inside it. How can you describe something you’re inside of? – Janis Joplin
Guess what, I might be the first hippie pinup girl. – Janis Joplin
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
Don’t go looking for Mr. Right. Look for Mr. Right Now. – Janis Joplin
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
I started singing rhythmically, and now I’m learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it – Janis Joplin
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
Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer. – Janis Joplin
At my concerts most of the chicks are looking for liberation, they think I’m gonna show ’em how to do it. – Janis Joplin
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
You can’t stay in your hometown and play because the two people will get tired of seeing you. – Janis Joplin
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
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. – Janis Joplin
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. – Janis Joplin
The older the grapes, sweeter the wine. – Janis Joplin
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
My business is to enjoy and have fun. And why not, if in the end everything will end, right? – Janis Joplin
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
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. – Janis Joplin
I’m not really thinking much… Just sort of, trying to feel. – Janis Joplin
Don’t you know that you’re nothing more than a one night stand? – Janis Joplin
I’d rather have ten years of superhypermost than live to be seventy sitting in some goddamn chair watching TV. – Janis Joplin
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
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
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
If someone comes along, gonna give you some love and affection, I say get it while you can. – Janis Joplin
I won’t quit to become someone’s old lady. – Janis Joplin
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. – Janis Joplin
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? – Janis Joplin
I’m tired of all these hippie jack-offs – Janis Joplin
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
You can feel all things at once, so why not wear all things at once? – Janis Joplin
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
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
I just want to feel as much as I can, it’s what soul is all about. – Janis Joplin
Freedom is just another word for when you have NOTHING left to lose. – Janis Joplin
If you’ve got a today, don’t wear it tomorrow. Tomorrow never happens. It’s all the same day. – Janis Joplin
You know you’ve got it, if it makes you feel good. – Janis Joplin
As good as you’ve been to this world is as good as it’s gonna be right back to you. – Janis Joplin
Life is too damn short and [screwed] up to go through it silently loving someone and never telling them how you feel. [Screw] the consequences, [screw] the implications of the actions, to hell with it all… whatever happens as a result is better than the nothingness that is inevitable with silence. – Janis Joplin
I think I think too much. That’s why I drink! – Janis Joplin
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
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.” – Janis Joplin – Janis Joplin
I’m one of those regular weird people. – Janis Joplin
When you hold somebody, you gotta hold them like it’s the last minute of your life. – Janis Joplin
It used to make me unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn’t know what to do with it. But now I’ve learned how to make feeling work for me… I don’t know, I just want to feel as much as I can, it’s what ‘soul’ is all about. – Janis Joplin
I would trade all my tomorrow’s for one single yesterday. – Janis Joplin
It’s not what isn’t, it’s what you wish was that makes unhappiness. – Janis Joplin
Singing, it’s like it’s like loving somebody, it’s a supreme emotional and physical experience. – Janis Joplin
It’s hard to be free but when it works, it’s worth it! – Janis Joplin
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
Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got. – Janis Joplin
Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything. – Janis Joplin
My father wouldn’t get us a TV, he wouldn’t allow a TV in the house. – Janis Joplin
Women to be in-a the music business give up more than you’d ever know. She’s got kids she gave up. Any woman gives up home life, an old man, probably, because you’re so crazy on planes and runnin’ and you never find ’em egain. You give up, you give up a home and friends, you give up children and friends, you give up an old man and friends, you give up any constant in the world except music. That’s the only thing you’ve got man, after you boil it down, the only thing you got left in the world is that music, man. And, so for a woman to sing, she really needs to, or wants to. A man can do it as a gig, ’cause he knows he can get laid tonight. – Janis Joplin
I love being a star more than life itself. – Janis Joplin
When everything is together – the band, me, the audience, it’s boss! It’s just like magic. – Janis Joplin
I read, I painted, I didn’t hate niggers, – Janis Joplin
I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me. – Janis Joplin
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
I believe the only people who truly experience and test the application of equality are twins. – Janis Joplin
She was electrifying. It was like she was channeling Bessie Smith or something. – Janis Joplin
One of my talking points will be the accident of geography. – Janis Joplin
On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone. – Janis Joplin
I hope you’re going to edit this stuff. I don’t want to sound like a senile, self-pitying chick babbling on and on about her days of glory. – Janis Joplin
I had a moment with her at Elaine’s. – Janis Joplin
