“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.”

Life is too damn short and [screwed] up to go through it silently loving someone and never telling them how you feel. [Screw]

Singing, it’s like it’s like loving somebody, it’s a supreme emotional and physical experience.

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.

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.

I don’t know, I just want to feel as much as I can, it’s what ‘soul’ is all about.

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?’

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.

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.

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?