If I don’t have friends, then I ain’t nothing.
BILLIE HOLIDAYIf I don’t have friends, then I ain’t nothing.
BILLIE HOLIDAYYou 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.
BILLIE HOLIDAYDon’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.
BILLIE HOLIDAYNew 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 HOLIDAYIf 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 HOLIDAYGod bless the child that’s got his own.
BILLIE HOLIDAYThe whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.
BILLIE HOLIDAYI 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 HOLIDAYThem 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.
BILLIE HOLIDAYAnd when you’re poor, you grow up fast.
BILLIE HOLIDAYIn 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.
BILLIE HOLIDAYIf 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 HOLIDAYI never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own.
BILLIE HOLIDAYThere’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.
BILLIE HOLIDAYYou can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.
BILLIE HOLIDAYMom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.
BILLIE HOLIDAY