Billie Holiday Quotes

1. Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain.





2. Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.

3. A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

4. I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been.






5. Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.

6. I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.

7. If I don't have friends, then I ain't got nothing.


8. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

9. If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.

10. You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling.

11. 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.





12. I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.

13. I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know.

14. Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.







15. One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.

16. In this country, don't forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There's no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it's the worst kind of hell for those who love you.

17. Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.

18. People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.

19. Singing songs like "The Man I Love" or "Porgy" is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.

20. There's no damn business like show business - you have to smile to keep from throwing up.




21. They think they can make fuel from horse manure - now, I don't know if your car will be able to get 30 miles to the gallon, but it's sure gonna put a stop to siphoning.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.

25. 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. If you think you need stuff to play music or sing, you're crazy. It can fix you so you can't play nothing or sing nothing.


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