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.
BILLIE HOLIDAYLove is like a faucet, it turns off and on.
More Billie Holiday Quotes
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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.
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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.
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If nobody can learn from the past, then there’s no point in raking it up.
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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.
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There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.
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You can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.
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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.
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And when you’re poor, you grow up fast.
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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.
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When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.
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Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.
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I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own.
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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.
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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.
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I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.
BILLIE HOLIDAY






