Billie Holiday

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

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.

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

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 up with anything. If you copy, you’re working without any real feeling.

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

Insight emerges out of silence.

Failure is no accident.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.

I know that god is real. I have seen him smile through the sunlight as it dances across your skin and lays gently at your feet.

Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

I was brought up to be a gentleman. That means you know how to walk, talk and dress the part.

I lie and tell you I had a dream about you last night, so it makes it more socially acceptable to reach out to someone I haven’t spoken to in years.

Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements.

Here I am alive, and it’s not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.

What is important is not the right doctrine but the attainment of the true experience. It is giving up believing in belief.

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.