Billie Holiday

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

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

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.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was 6 years old.

There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

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

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.

Change is always happening. That’s one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.

All this is saying is, OK I see now, the ‘hood does not quite want Shirley Bassey yet, so let me still give them this. Crack Music was made after Diamonds. After black people were like, ‘I don’t know about this one.’ It was like me reaching too high for the cookie jar.

My Strat is another arm, it’s part of me. It doesn’t feel like a guitar at all. It’s an implement which is my voice.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition.

We don’t talk music. We just play.

The fans dictate to you when you’re done!

I’ll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I’d never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I’d never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn’t much like it at first.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don’t do that on stage.

I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it’s about feeling more than being perfect.

Jazz music is our original American culture.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

Music was our wife, and we loved her. And we stayed with her, and we clothed her, and we put diamond rings on her hands.

We open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to arrive at something new and different.

All of the technique doesn’t matter… only if the feeling is right.