153 Quotes by Janis Joplin

Who you are is what you settle for, you know?

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.

I've been looking around, and I noticed something: how much you really need to be loved. Ambition isn't just a desperate quest for positions or money. It's just love - lots of love.

Playing is just about feeling. Playing isn't necessarily about misery. Playing isn't necessarily about happiness. But it's just about letting yourself feel all those things that you have already on the inside of you, but you're all the time trying to push them aside because they don't make for polite conversation or something.

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.

Rock on out.

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.

Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin. Now, they are so subtle, they can milk you with two notes. They can make you feel like they told you the whole universe. But I don't know that yet. All I got now is strength. Maybe if I keep singing, maybe I'll get it.

As it gets closer and more probable, being a star is really losing its meaning.