I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.
BILLIE HOLIDAYOne day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.
More Billie Holiday Quotes
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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 difficult I’ll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.
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When you sing, always tell the truth.
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Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.
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If nobody can learn from the past, then there’s no point in raking it up.
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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 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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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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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 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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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.
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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 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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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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A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.
BILLIE HOLIDAY