Billie Holiday Quotes

I never sing a song the same way twice.

Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.

Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.

I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.

Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain.

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.

Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you - and kill you the long, slow, hard way.

In this country kings or dukes don't amount to nothing. The greatest man around then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was the President; so I started calling Lester the President. It got shortened to Pres.

I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.

There's no damn business like show business - you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

If I don't have friends, then I ain't nothing.

You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling.

Lust may be in the heart, though it be not seen by others; as guests may be in the house, though they look not out at the windows.

God has blessed you when he lets you believe in somebody.

I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know.

I try to improvise like Les Young, Louis Armstrong or someone else I admire. What comes out is what I feel.

Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.

I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.

If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

All dope can do for you is kill you... the long hard way. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

When you sing, always tell the truth.

New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size.

I think I copied my style from Louis Armstrong. Because I used to like the big volume and the big sound that Bessie Smith got when she sang ... So I liked the feeling that Louis got and I wanted the big volume that Bessie Smith got. But I found that it didn't work with me, because I didn't have a big voice. So anyway between the two of them I sorta got Billie Holiday.

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.

In this country, don't forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There's no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it's the worst kind of hell for those who love you.

The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.

So I asked him to play "Trav'lin' All Alone." That came closer than anything to the way I felt. And some part of it must have come across. The whole joint quieted down. If someone had dropped a pin, it would have sounded like a bomb. When I finished, everybody in the joint was crying in their beer, and I picked thirty-eight bucks up off the floor. . . . When I showed Mom the money for the rent and told her I had a regular job singing for eighteen dollars a week, she could hardly believe it.

Them that's got shall get, Them that's not shall lose. So the Bible says, And it still is news. Mama may have, Papa may have, But God bless the child that's got his own.

One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.

I don't think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

I've been told that nobody sings the word 'hunger' like I do.

If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.

I can only sing songs my way. I don't know any other way.

The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.

I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.

Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.

And when you're poor, you grow up fast.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

The only reason they're out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.

God bless the child that's got his own.

If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung.

You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.

I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm playing a horn...What comes out is what I feel.

They think they can make fuel from horse manure - now, I don't know if your car will be able to get 30 miles to the gallon, but it's sure gonna put a stop to siphoning.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.