If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.
BILLIE HOLIDAYAnd when you’re poor, you grow up fast.
More Billie Holiday Quotes
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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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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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I never sing a song the same way twice.
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One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.
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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.
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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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I can only sing songs my way. I don’t know any other way.
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The difficult I’ll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.
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I don’t think I’m singing. I feel like I’m playing a horn, What comes out is what I feel.
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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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There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.
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I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.
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Don’t be in such a hurry.
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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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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