Words matter. These are the best Janis Ian Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
At the end of the day, if you don’t have a record contract, a studio or a guitar, you can still write songs. You’re still an artist. That’s something no one can take away.
Once you’re halfway home, you know that you can probably get the rest of the way there.
I know just enough Japanese to get by if I get lost and greet an audience properly, just from having a lot of Japanese friends and being there over the years.
Some people would rather stay ignorant and self-satisfied.
A radio show recently did a beautiful eulogy of me.
I’ve always been an avid reader. If I don’t have a book in the car, I’ll stop and pick one up just to have something to read. I don’t even remember learning to read.
I bought all my friends guitars and I had a good time with my money. But then one day the IRS came knocking.
That’s an amazing moment, the first time you hear yourself on radio. It’s still thrilling.
The best thing you can learn from the worst times of your life is that it always gets better. It may take a month, a year, a decade, but it will get better if you leave yourself open to it.
It’s what I do well – I write about things that make people uncomfortable. That’s probably the only thing I do better than my peers.
At the end of the day, all you can hope for is to go on. The older I get, the more I realize that just keeping on keeping on is what life’s all about.
When you’re young, the goal is to have a hit. You get a little older and the goal becomes to get to make another record.
The money when you’re having a hit is great, but money can be taken from you. What can’t be taken from you is the talent and the effect your work has.
I think I grew up, stopped worrying about what people thought of me, and whether things were going to turn out OK. I’m concentrating on doing the best work I can do and letting it go at that.
I want to do some fiction writing, I’ve had some pretty good luck with short stories, I’d like to do a couple of larger things.
I feel I was born with the music coming to me, and that’s not something to be wasted.
I started ‘Society’s Child’ on a bus in East Orange as I was going home from school. I saw a black and white couple sitting there and started thinking about it.
Of course, I have a different vested interest in the gay community, because I am gay, and I would certainly enjoy the tax advantages that straight people have, and the inheritance advantages, and things like Social Security, but I’ve always been a civil rights advocate across the board. That’s how I was raised.
I played for anybody and everybody from the time I started playing guitar, when I was 10 or 11.
I think one of the reasons musicians keep doing what they do and writers keep doing what they do, is that we’re totally unsuited for anything else. And I for one am much too lazy.
I mean, I would love to have the career Joan Baez is having in Europe right now, but God knows I don’t begrudge her that career.
I gave guitar lessons. I tried to join bands. My mom always said it was obvious that nothing was going to stop me.
