Janis Ian

“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 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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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, 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 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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“So remember those who win the gameLose the love they sought to gainIn debitures of quality and dubious integrityTheir small-town eyes will gape at youIn dull surprise when payment dueExceeds accounts received at seventeen”

“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 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.”