Billie Holiday

I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

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.

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

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.

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

One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.

If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really trying.

The weird thing about bass is the simplest stuff to do is the hardest.

The deeper you get into the music allows the ability to appreciate art and all other forms of expression.

Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen and be over eighteen.

I’m an interpreter of stories. When I perform it’s like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.

A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?

It’s difficult for me to dislike an artist, no matter what he’s creating.

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

What don’t I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain’t nobody here saying, ‘You’d better learn this.’ But I still think I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.