Billie Holiday

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

Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.

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

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

Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.

Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

Dizzy used to tell me I’m playing too hard. He’d say to not give everything. Miles told me that too.

What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?

Inspiration comes from tunes you play, other musicians and your own imagination.

What I’m doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word – I love it.

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.

I try stuff. I synthesize what’s of value with some of the other things I have at my disposal.

I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

If I’m not saying it in four choruses or less, then I’m not saying it.

Jazz music has always been a place where anything is possible.