“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.”

I’m one of those regular weird people.

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.

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.

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

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

My father wouldn’t get us a TV, he wouldn’t allow a TV in the house.

Man, there ain’t gonna be nothing left for Janis.

You can feel all things at once, so why not wear all things at once?

It’s hard to be free but when it works, it’s worth it!

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.

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

I’d rather not sing than sing quiet.

That’s what rock and roll is for, turn that switch on, and man, it can all be.

I won’t quit to become someone’s old lady.

When you hold somebody, you gotta hold them like it’s the last minute of your life.

My business is to enjoy and have fun. And why not, if in the end everything will end, right?

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.

Success is feminine and like a woman, if you cringe before her, she will override you

Time goes by so fast. Nothin’ can outrun it. Death commences too early–almost before you’re half-acquainted with life–you meet the other.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S. I didn’t identify as that before I came here.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.

Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.