Billie Holiday Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“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 -
“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.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“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.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain.”
-- 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 -
“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.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.”
-- 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 -
“If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling.”
-- 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 -
“When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.”
-- 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 can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm playing a horn...What comes out is what I feel.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“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 -
“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.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“I've been told that nobody sings the word 'hunger' like I do.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“There's no damn business like show business - you have to smile to keep from throwing up.”
-- Billie Holiday -
“I can only sing songs my way. I don't know any other way.”
-- 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