Billie Holiday - Lady Sings the Blues (1956)

14 Sourced Quotes

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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
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.

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
I've been told that nobody sings the word "hunger" like I do. Or the word "love."

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
Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldn't treat them, and then caught them, prosecuted them for not paying their taxes, and then sent them to jail. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs. The jails are full and the problem is getting worse every day.

Billie Holiday
If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind. There are more kicks the fuck 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.

Billie Holiday
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.

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

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

Billie Holiday
Everyone's got to be different. You can't copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing.

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

Billie Holiday
Singing songs like the '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
The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.

Billie Holiday