Janis Ian Quotations

I learned the truth at seventeen, That love was meant for beauty queens, And high school girls with clear skinned smiles, Who married young and then retired.

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.

There will always be those people who are just backward and ignorant. There will always be those people. They need somebody to feel superior to.

I had a vague idea of the song's impact in the '60s, but that was tempered by the hate mail and threats I was receiving. It was only about ten years ago, when I finally put it back in my show because so many people were asking for it, that I understood 'Society's Child' real impact.

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.

Artists are taught to be humble about their impact, especially in folk music. It's so ingrained that I have a hard time even thinking I had any impact other than what a normal hit song would have.

Once you're halfway home, you know that you can probably get the rest of the way there.

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.

Some people would rather stay ignorant and self-satisfied.

It seems to be part of the human condition to need someone you can look down on. I still don't get that one.

I bought all my friends guitars and I had a good time with my money. But then one day the IRS came knocking.

It's neat to have finally reached a point where I can accept what I was and what I am.

I think these last 10 years have seen just a huge shift in the psyche of this country as regards gay people. I think AIDS had a lot to do with it. So many families who really believed they'd 'never met one' were suddenly confronted with their sons becoming ill, and friends of sons. I think that brought a lot of it into the open.

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.

A radio show recently did a beautiful eulogy of me.

I feel I was born with the music coming to me, and that's not something to be wasted.

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.

That's an amazing moment, the first time you hear yourself on radio. It's still thrilling.

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.

I was one of I think three white girls in my school. So, I was very much an outsider. And plus I was Jewish and all of my friends were black and Baptist because they listen to the coolest music. We were all listening to Ray Charles and what was then called race music.

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.

I see interracial couples all the time in Nashville. I'm a Jew in Nashville. I'm a gay person in Nashville. It's a non-issue in most of the time. That's a huge leap forward.

I think all of us thought that by the '70s, at the latest the '80s, all the world's problems would be solved and everyone would be getting along fine. And instead we saw that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that year, Robert F. Kennedy died. We saw that it was going to be a lot more difficult than I think we had thought.

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 was interviewed for a Grammy television show, and they asked me about Nashville, and I talked for three minutes and when I finished, I was teared up. The whole room was crying. Nashville has given me a home, where I never had a home before.

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.

My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well.

I gave guitar lessons. I tried to join bands. My mom always said it was obvious that nothing was going to stop me.

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 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.

I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my walletand check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing.

I'm a huge Peter Mayer fan, but only when I don't feel like killing him for being so good. I love Peter's work, though it irritates me that he plays so much better than I do. If I rocked half as hard as Peter does, I'd own the world by now.

Truth is not the enemy and whatever does not kill us, sets us free.

Did you have an awesome time? Did you drink awesome shooters, listen to awesome music, and then just sit around and soak up each others awesomeness?

Wish I'd written Tikkun Olam – a Weavers or Peter Paul & Mary hit!

I love seeing teachers outside of school. It's like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs.

Going off the road just leaves me more time to be a writer.

I write a lot from instinct. But as you're writing out of instinct, once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, the craft is always there talking to you in the back of your head...that tells you when it's time to go to the chorus, when it's time to rhyme. Real basic craft... it's second nature.

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 played for anybody and everybody from the time I started playing guitar, when I was 10 or 11.

The heart of a city Is the soul of a man It winds like a river Through the heart of the land They can tear down a building They can tear down a park They can strike at a symbol But they can't strike the heart.

When people used to call me a political writer, it was kind of confusing because I was always much more interested in the social end of things which hinges on the political, but it isn't really part of it.

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.

Those of us with ravaged faces, lacking in the social graces, desperately remained at home, inventing lovers on the phone.

Dreams were all they gave for free to ugly duckling girls like me.

Society's Child' was a real hard record to start with. That's all you want is for you to put your first record out and have people screaming at you in the streets. But it taught me right away that what I was doing was valuable and important.

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.

Libraries are a hallmark of a civilized culture, and librarians represent that culture to all facets of society.

To those of us who know the pain, Of valentines that never came, And those whose names were never called, When choosing sides for basketball.

It was long ago and far away, The world was younger than today, And dreams were all they gave for free, To ugly duckling girls like me.

'Society's Child' was a real hard record to start with. That's all you want is for you to put your first record out and have people screaming at you in the streets. But it taught me right away that what I was doing was valuable and important.