Billie Holiday

I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.

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

No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

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

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

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.

A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?

Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.

To compose music, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.

Jazz has evolved with an inner necessity characteristic of any true art form.

If you take the time and your talent is real, it will last.

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don’t know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

Don’t give up trying to do what you really want. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

A Les Paul, which is kind of a sissy guitar compared to a Strat anyway. The Les Paul is heavier, but because of that bulk you can do bends on it more easily. Also, the Les Paul’s lack of a vibrato arm means you’re not wrestling against the spring-loaded bridge all the time. The Strat is the ultimate because it’s like having a miniature pedal steel within it. Once you get familiar with it where the bends are and where they meld down into a fourth or whatever, you can do all kinds of pedal-steel-like things, which I think are cool..

I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.

‘Swing’ is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a ‘swing band’ in music.

A beat is a moment in the life a groove.

The emotional reaction is all that matters.