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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.

Janis Ian

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Janis Ian
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: April 7
Autobiographer
Composer
Guitarist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Janis Eddy Fink
Probably
Things
Write
People
Better
Wells
Well
Writing
Thing
Peers
Uncomfortable
Make

More quotes by Janis Ian

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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.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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Truth is not the enemy and whatever does not kill us, sets us free.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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It seems to be part of the human condition to need someone you can look down on. I still don't get that one.
Janis Ian
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I write a lot from instinct. But as you're writing out of instinct, once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, the craft is always there talking to you in the back of your head...that tells you when it's time to go to the chorus, when it's time to rhyme. Real basic craft... it's second nature.
Janis Ian
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I feel I was born with the music coming to me, and that's not something to be wasted.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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Once you're halfway home, you know that you can probably get the rest of the way there.
Janis Ian
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It's neat to have finally reached a point where I can accept what I was and what I am.
Janis Ian
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I bought all my friends guitars and I had a good time with my money. But then one day the IRS came knocking.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian
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Some people would rather stay ignorant and self-satisfied.
Janis Ian
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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.
Janis Ian