Janis Ian

“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.”

“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.”

“'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 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 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 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.”

“A radio show recently did a beautiful eulogy of me.”

“Some people would rather stay ignorant and self-satisfied.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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 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 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'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.”

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