Eleanora Fagan knew professionally as Billie Holiday was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills. These Billie Holiday quotes will motivate you.
Best Billie Holiday Quotes
- “The difficult I’ll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.” ~ Billie Holiday , Billie Holiday quotes about music
- “You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.” ~ Billie Holiday
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“The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I don’t think I’m singing. I feel like I’m playing a horn…What comes out is what I feel.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “If nobody can learn from the past,
then there’s no point in raking it up.” ~ Billie Holiday - “Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “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.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “God has blessed you when he lets you believe in somebody.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “When you sing, always tell the truth.” ~ Billie Holiday
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“Don’t be in such a hurry.” ~ 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.” ~ Billie Holiday , Billie Holiday quotes about dope
- “I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “People don’t understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “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.” ~ Billie Holiday
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“If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “You can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “Them that’s got shall get, Them that’s not shall lose. So the Bible says, And it still is news. Mama may have, Papa may have, But God bless the child that’s got his own.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I can only sing songs my way. I don’t know any other way.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “Lust may be in the heart, though it be not seen by others; as guests may be in the house, though they look not out at the windows.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “In this country, don’t forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There’s no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it’s the worst kind of hell for those who love you.” ~ Billie Holiday
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“And when you’re poor, you grow up fast.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I think I copied my style from Louis Armstrong. Because I used to like the big volume and the big sound that Bessie Smith got when she sang … So I liked the feeling that Louis got and I wanted the big volume that Bessie Smith got. But I found that it didn’t work with me, because I didn’t have a big voice. So anyway between the two of them I sorta got Billie Holiday.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.” ~ Billie Holiday
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“Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “God bless the child that’s got his own.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “The blues to me is like being very sad, very sick, going to church, being very happy … it’s sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you’re out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “So I asked him to play “Trav’lin’ All Alone.” That came closer than anything to the way I felt. And some part of it must have come across. The whole joint quieted down. If someone had dropped a pin, it would have sounded like a bomb. When I finished, everybody in the joint was crying in their beer, and I picked thirty-eight bucks up off the floor. . . . When I showed Mom the money for the rent and told her I had a regular job singing for eighteen dollars a week, she could hardly believe it.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “They think they can make fuel from horse manure – now, I don’t know if your car will be able to get 30 miles to the gallon, but it’s sure gonna put a stop to siphoning.” ~ Billie Holiday
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“If I don’t have friends, then I ain’t nothing.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “The only reason they’re out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I joined Count Basie’s band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn’t see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “All dope can do for you is kill you… the long hard way. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.” ~ Billie Holiday , Billie Holiday quotes on love
- “New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size.” ~ Billie Holiday
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“I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I try to improvise like Les Young, Louis Armstrong or someone else I admire. What comes out is what I feel.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I never sing a song the same way twice.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “Singing songs like ‘The Man I Love’ or ‘Porgy’ is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.” ~ Billie Holiday
- “In this country kings or dukes don’t amount to nothing. The greatest man around then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was the President; so I started calling Lester the President. It got shortened to Pres.” ~ Billie Holiday
