Home > Author > Billie Holiday
21 " If you find a tune and it’s got something to do with you, you don’t have to evolve anything. You just feel it, and when you sing it other people can feel something too. "
― Billie Holiday , Lady Sings the Blues
22 " Tony kept my job open. He offered to backstop me with the money I needed. But it was the way he did it I’ll never forget, with love and respect, like a human being holding out his hand to someone who needed it. "
23 " Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldn't treat them, and then caught them, prosecuted them for not paying their taxes, and then sent them to jail. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs. The jails are full and the problem is getting worse every day. p153 "
24 " I'm A Fool To Want YouI'm a fool to want youI'm a fool to want youTo want a love that can't be trueA love that's there for others tooI'm a fool to hold youSuch a fool to hold youTo seek a kiss not mine aloneTo share a kiss that Devil has knownTime and time again I said I'd leave youTime and time again I went awayBut then would come the time when I would need youAnd once again these words I had to sayTake me back, I love youI need youI know it's wrong, it must be wrongBut right or wrong I can't get alongWithout you "
― Billie Holiday
25 " I had the white gowns and the white shoes. And every night they’d bring me the white gardenias and the white junk. When I was on, I was on and nobody gave me any trouble. No cops, no Treasury agents, nobody. I got into trouble when I tried to get off. "
26 " Mom just loved people. Part of this might have come from never wanting to be alone, where she could only brood over Pop. Part of it must have come from her fears for me. She knew she wouldn’t be around for very long to take care of me. There was damn little she could do to protect me after she was gone. All she had was me. All I had was her. "
27 " It was during my stint at Café Society that a song was born which became my personal protest—“ Strange Fruit.” The germ of the song was in a poem written by Lewis Allen. I first met him at Café Society. When he showed me that poem, I dug it right off. It seemed to spell out all the things that had killed Pop. "
28 " It still depresses me every time I sing it, though. It reminds me of how Pop died. But I have to keep singing it, not only because people ask for it but because twenty years after Pop died the things that killed him are still happening in the South. "
29 " When I sing it, it affects me so much I get sick. It takes all the strength out of me. "
30 " Everyone’s got to be different. You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music. "
31 " It wasn’t long before I was one of the highest-paid slaves around. I was making a thousand a week—but I had about as much freedom as a field hand in Virginia a hundred years before. "
32 " A victrola was a big deal in those days, and there weren’t any parlors around that had one except Alice’s. I spent many a wonderful hour there listening to Pops and Bessie. I remember Pops’ recording of ‘West End Blues’ and how it used to gas me. It was the first time I ever heard anybody sing without using any words. "
33 " They forget what it was like in those days. A whorehouse was about the only place where black and white folks could meet in any natural way. They damn well couldn’t rub elbows in the churches. "
34 " Everyone’s got to be different. You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing. "
35 " Even when they insult you they do it to your face. That’s the only way they can let you know they’re superior to you. They might die and leave you all their money, but somewhere in the fine print in that will they’ve got to let you know you were a good nigger but you’re still a nigger. "
36 " Whenever I had a couple of bucks it was always so little I was ashamed to send it home, so I would give it to Lester Young to invest. I hoped he could shoot enough dice to parlay it into a bill big enough I didn’t have to feel ashamed to send home. "
37 " It’s the easiest thing in the world to say, ‘Every broad for herself.’ Saying it and acting that way is one thing that’s kept some of us behind the eight ball where we’ve been living for a hundred years. "
38 " I'll be seeing youIn every lovely summer's dayIn everything that's light and gayI'll always think of you that wayI'll find you in the morning sunAnd when the night is newI'll be looking at the moonBut I'll be seeing you "
39 " I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces all day through. "
40 " I’m always making a comeback, but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been. "