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There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

Billie Holiday

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

Love Rain Threat Walk
I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Chance Myself Play Work
I never sing a song the same way twice.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Myself Sing Song
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
The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Basis Feeling Myself Singing
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

Exercise Myself Night Sing Stand
Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Fight Lose Time Win Worst
You can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

End Feeling Reality Work Yourself
I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Feeling Life Myself Sing Thinking Way
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
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

Hard Kill Love Yourself
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
If I don’t have friends, then I ain’t nothing.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Friendship Myself
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 only reason they’re out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Fall Myself Reason See
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.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Money See World

There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

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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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Popular Authors

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