Billie Holiday

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.

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

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

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.

When you sing, always tell the truth.

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

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.

Love is simple: It is waking up knowing you exist in a mind outside of your own. It is having one heart that carries two beats. It is you and me spoken in terms of us and we.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Life has two rules: 1. Never quite 2. Always remember 1.

I mean, I’m very, very competitive.

We are here for experience, and experience is a preparation to know the Truth when we meet it.

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

[On leaving Brooklyn] I left the day I graduated high school.

Opportunities are usually disguised by hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.

You’ve got to teach youngsters the difference between right and wrong, but you shouldn’t try to poke it down their throats. Let them ask the questions and then give them the answers.

Unless you know who you are, you will always be vulnerable to what people say.