You can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.
BILLIE HOLIDAYDope 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.
More Billie Holiday Quotes
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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.
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And when you’re poor, you grow up fast.
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The difficult I’ll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.
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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.
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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.
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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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Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.
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Don’t be in such a hurry.
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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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The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.
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People don’t understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.
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I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.
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Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.
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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.
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The only reason they’re out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.
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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.
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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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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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I never sing a song the same way twice.
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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.
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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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Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.
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One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.
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If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.
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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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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