Janis Joplin Quotes

The words to country songs are very earthy like the blues. They're not as dressed up and the people are very honest and say, 'Look, I miss you darlin', so I went out and got drunk in this bar.' That's the way you say it. Where in Tin Pan Alley they would say, 'Oh I missed you darling, so I went to this restaurant and I sat down and had a dinner for one.' That's cleaned up now, you see? But country and blues tells it like it is.

I speak from the heart. Certain people follow lyricists and people that put words on a dictionary together, and this and that. I'm more of a rapper that speaks how I feel. I just tell it how it is.

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour - ha ha ha ha ha - they'll take you away, man. You can't.

I think the best acting is when you allow yourself to be kind of vulnerable in the moment.

I'm not a theatrics guy who does things for effect. Whatever comes out is what I feel. It just comes out.

True country music is honesty, sincerity, and real life to the hilt.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice.

I can't fake emotion.

I'm not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I'm going to say how I feel.

I just sing what I feel in my heart. I ain't trying to prove nothing, and I don't think I ever did.

What I am is what you get. My wife will tell me all the time, 'You probably shouldn't say that.' But the fact of the matter is, when you get under my dander, I have to express myself.

Singing from the heart is my only goal.

Sometimes it's good to just sing and let the words come out. Whatever comes out is valid because it's what you were thinking.

All I know is real life. I don't know how to act. I don't know how to pretend.

I'm a spontaneous actress, not a studied one.

Emotional sounds don't lie.

I think what it was is that Tupac was extremely passionate, very honest and raw in his approach to communicating. He understood communicating. And I think he just did it from a deep place within.

Once you realize that what I’m saying is true and comes from the heart, then it’s easy. But if you see it all as a façade and just a presentation of affected emotion, then it’s not so easy, it’ll just confuse you.

I love to see when people are real passionate about what they feel and what they say.

The idea is that for ten minutes, we forget that we have feelings. And we forget about protecting ourselves or other people and we just say the truth. For ten minutes. And then we can go back to being lame.

The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.

When I open my mouth and sing, the truth comes out. When I write, the truth comes out. I can't lie. That, I think, is one of the strongest elements of my music. When people talk about my writing as though I'm doing it from an accountant's perspective, it really pisses me off.

[Billie Holiday] was keeping it super real, and you can feel that to this day. Everything that she sang, she believed in. So I had to pick songs that I felt the same about.