[Recalling the dance sequence on the stairs with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in The Little Colonel] The smile on my face was not acting; I was ecstatic. — Shirley Temple

Janis Joplin photographed on an early afternoon in San Francisco. What if her all out performances wreck her throat? She looks away, “Maybe I won’t last long, but if I hold back, I’m no good now.”

“I was the same chick, because I’ve been her forever, and I know her, and she ain’t no star: she’s lonely, or she’s good at something. I have to get undressed after the show, my clothes are ruined, my heels are run through, my underwear is ripped, my body’s strained from my clothes, my hair’s stringy, I got a headache and I got to go home, and I’m lonely, and my clothes are all fucked up, my shoes have come apart, and I’m pleading with my road manager to please give me a ride home, please, please, just so I can take these fuckin’ clothes off, and that ain’t no star, man, that’s just a person.”

“I gotta go on doin’ it the way I see it…I got no choice but to take it like I see it. I’m here to have a party while I’m on this earth…I’m gettin’ it now, today. I don’t even know where I’m gonna be twenty years from now, so I’m just gonna keep on rockin’, cause if I start saving up bits and pieces of me…man, there ain’t gonna be nothing left for Janis.”

“Some months after Janis died, I had a dream. It was at the end of a concert. Janis came off stage and I was waiting for her. She said, ‘Was I okay?’ with that little-girl uncertainty of hers, and I said, ‘You were great.’ I hugged her. It was incredibly vivid. I woke up with a ball of emotion inside me, and I felt that Janis had visited me from the grave. She wasn’t just asking if she did all right in the concert. She was asking about her life. And I was so glad to have a chance to reassure her. ‘You were great, Janis.’” — John Cooke

“She is and always will be a star, one we shall never forget, nor cease to be grateful to.”