Billie Holiday

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

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

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

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

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

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

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

This is not new territory. Stop lights like lullabies write my eulogy.

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.

I’m a product of pop culture.

When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived; and that, I think is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition.

I share no man’s opinions; I have my own.

We don’t see the things the way they are. We see things the way WE are.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

This is no dress rehearsal.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean.

Every situation needs a hero. Step up and be that for your child.

When you once get an idea in which you believe with all your heart, work it out.

We tell lies when we are afraid, . . . afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.

You have to be odd to be number one.