Quote

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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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
Black
East
School
Saws
Home
Sitting
Children
Couple
Going
Started
Thinking
Child
Society
Bus
White
Orange

More quotes by Janis Ian

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I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my walletand check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing.
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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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.
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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.
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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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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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.
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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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Some people would rather stay ignorant and self-satisfied.
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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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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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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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 feel I was born with the music coming to me, and that's not something to be wasted.
Janis Ian
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Wish I'd written Tikkun Olam – a Weavers or Peter Paul & Mary hit!
Janis Ian
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Going off the road just leaves me more time to be a writer.
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
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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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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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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