On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone. - Janis Joplin

"There isn't going to be any turning point. ... There isn't going to be any next-month-it'll-be-better, next fucking year, next fucking life. You don't have any time to wait for. You just got to look around you and say, "So this is it. This is really all there is to it. This little thing." Everybody needing such little things and they can't get them. Everybody needing just a little ... confidence from somebody else and they can't get it. Everybody, everybody fighting to protect their little feelings. Everybody, you know, like reaching out tentatively but drawing back. It's so shallow and seems so ... fucking ... it seems like such a shame. It's so close to being like really right and good and open and amorphous and giving and everything. But it's not. And it ain't gonna be.

September 1969
quoted in "The New Yorker" 9 August 1999"

You know that I need a man, honey Lord, You know that I need a man, But when I ask you to you just tell me That maybe you can.

To sing blues, you've got to be able to, ... be willing to, feel things.