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

All you really have that really matters are feelings. That’s what music is to me.” – Janis Joplin

When I sing, I feel like when you’re first in love. It’s more than sex.

After they see me, when their mothers are feeding them all that cashmere sweater and girdle [expletive deleted by the New York Times]

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

Maybe they’ll have a second thought – that they can be themselves and win.

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

The more you live, the less you die.

You know you’ve got it, if it makes you feel good.

Don’t compromise your self, you’re all you got.

The older the grapes, sweeter the wine.

Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.

That was to be true to myself, to be the person that I…that was on inside of me and not play games.

Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.

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

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.

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-

What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.

Courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions, courage that could be described as ‘grace under pressure’ – grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.

I do not, as you know, take sufficient interest in dress to be able to describe the new fashions. Dress is a bore.

Then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.

Humanity is best described as inhumanity.

Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.