Lady Sings the Blues Quotes

“Everyones 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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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, Lady Sings the Blues

“Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“I guess I’m not the only one who heard their first good jazz in a whorehouse. But I never tried to make anything of it. If I’d heard Louis and Bessie at a Girl Scout jamboree, I’d have loved it just the same.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“I’m always making a comeback, but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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, Lady Sings the Blues

“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”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“When I sing it, it affects me so much I get sick. It takes all the strength out of me.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“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.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“Me han dicho que nadie canta la palabra hambre como yo. Ni la palabra amor. Tal vez yo recuerde lo que quieren decir esas palabras. Ni todos los Cadillac y visones del mundo -y he tenido unos cuantos- pueden lograr que las olvide.”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues