I gotta go on doin' it the way I see it...I got no choice but to take it like I see it. I'm here to have a party while I'm on this earth...I'm gettin' it now, today. I don't even know where I'm gonna be twenty years from now, so I'm just gonna keep on rockin', cause if I start saving up bits and pieces of me...man, there ain't gonna be nothing left for Janis.
Interpretation
Live in the moment and embrace life as you see it.
Janis Joplin's quote emphasizes the importance of living authentically and fully in the present. She expresses a carefree and joyful attitude towards life, indicating that one should not hold back or save parts of themselves for the future, but rather enjoy each moment as it comes, despite uncertainties ahead.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing life, I might say, 'As Janis Joplin said, I'm here to have a party while I'm on this earth.'
When I sing, I feel like when you're first in love. It's more than sex. It's that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it's gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills.
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 won't quit to become someone's old lady.
Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.
You can feel all things at once, so why not wear all things at once?
Wait a minute, maybe I can do anything.
Alone, she took hot baths and sat exhausted in the steaming water, wondering at her perpetual exhaustion. All that winter she noticed the limp, languid weight of her arms, her veins bulging slightly with the pressure of her extreme weariness ... one day in January she drew a razor blade lightly across the inside of her arm, near the elbow, to see what would happen.
A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.
For the millions of us who live glued to computer keyboards at work and TV monitors at home, food may be more than entertainment. It may be the only sensual experience left.
Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.
There is something very unsettling about being with someone when they die. People say it's peaceful. It's not peaceful. It's the most personal thing you can do, is die, and you feel almost like you're invading someone's most personal moment by being there.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.