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.
Tomorrow I will curse the dawn, but there will be other, earlier nights, and the dawns will be no longer hell laid out in alarms and raw bells and sirens.
It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man, and he said to me, I was maybe 9, and he said to me, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off, put a blanket on you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right. ... Then the best part of it is that when you wake up, for the first 15 seconds, you have no idea where you are. You're just alive. That's all you know. And it's bliss, it's absolute bliss.
You knew the sweetness of now, now, TONIGHT! who cares for tomorrow, tomorrow is nothing, yesterday is over and done, tonight live, tonight!
I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.
Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.
I was shy for several years in my early days in Hollywood until I figured out that no one really gave a damn if I was shy or not, and I got over my shyness.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.