Quotes from Janis Ian

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

Some people would rather stay ignorant and self-satisfied.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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

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 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.

'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.

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.

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.