Abbey Lincoln Quotes

#1. We have inherited a great music. This music is a holdover. It comes with us like the skin, the texture of our hair. It's our memory banks.

Abbey Lincoln

#2. Sing a song correctly and you live forever.

Abbey Lincoln

#3. I am the first instrument. I am the voice. I do not imitate other instruments. Other instruments imitate me.

Abbey Lincoln

#4. But I've been there and done that. I'm not trying to prove anything to anybody, and if somebody wants me to come, if they can afford what I ask, it's not as much as Madonna makes; not that I want what Madonna makes, but I was saying.

Abbey Lincoln

#5. I think that's what really a substantial work is, it's forever. It's the truth now and it was the truth then, and it will be the truth tomorrow.

Abbey Lincoln

#6. I don't have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapist is in my paint brushes.

Abbey Lincoln

#7. The best thing you can do is to be a woman and stand before the world and speak your heart.

Abbey Lincoln

#8. I remember hearing the song when I was 12 or 14 in - it must have been in Chicago, 'cause we didn't have a radio on the farm, and it was during the second World War. I had three brothers in that war who went overseas.

Abbey Lincoln

#9. It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.

Abbey Lincoln

#10. I was looking for the people who were making the music inside the cabinet. I would look in there and see if I could find somebody who was making all this wonderful music.

Abbey Lincoln

#11. I loved Billie Holiday more than any other person other than myself on the stage. Yeah, I do.

Abbey Lincoln

#12. You can never loose a thing If it belongs to you.

Abbey Lincoln

#13. There are men and women still on the streets, and that's all they are saying Can you spare a quarter? I come from a crowd of people who were current on the outlook on life, who were social and knew where they were and had some input into how things seemed to be.

Abbey Lincoln