Billie Holiday

Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.

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.

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.

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

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

You can practice to learn technique, but I’m more interested in conceiving something in the moment.

It’s the group sound that’s important, even when you’re playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.

Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.

We all do ‘do, re, mi’ but you got to find the other notes yourself.

I didn’t get my music together until I was 40.

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

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

It’s easy to play any musical instrument, just touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at Jazz.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.