Billie Holiday

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

When you sing, always tell the truth.

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.

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

Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is in relation to everything else.

The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflections. The water has no mind to receive their images.

Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.

There’s nothing written in the Bible, Old or New testament, that says, If you believe in Me, you ain’t going to have no troubles.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.

Believe in something larger than yourself…get involved in the big ideas of your time.

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

A man is but the product of his thoughts; what he thinks, he becomes.

It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.

To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.

Zen mind is not Zen mind. Throwing away Zen mind is correct Zen mind.

Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize in our own being, we are enough.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.