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

Billie Holiday

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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Body Eat Life Love Yourself
Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Marriage Myself Parents Young
The blues to me is like being very sad, very sick, going to church, being very happy … it’s sort of a mixed up thing. You just have to feel it.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Feeling Happiness Sadness Yourself
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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Love Myself Sing Work
I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Change Hate Music Myself Sing
If I don’t have friends, then I ain’t nothing.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

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

Feeling Improvisation Myself
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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Better Hard Kill Sing Slow Way
When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Hear Himself Play Singing Word
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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Heart Home Lust Window
If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Myself Need Sing
Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Enough Known Limitation
People don’t understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Fight Kind People Record Understand Yourself
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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Appearance Hairs Plantation Yourself
Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Love Rain Threat Walk
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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Goodness Mindset Thinking Yourself

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

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

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Popular Authors

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