And when you’re poor, you grow up fast.
BILLIE HOLIDAYThe whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.
More Billie Holiday Quotes
-
-
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 HOLIDAY -
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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
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 -
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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
The only reason they’re out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
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 -
One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
The difficult I’ll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
If I don’t have friends, then I ain’t nothing.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.
BILLIE HOLIDAY -
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 -
I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.
BILLIE HOLIDAY






