Top 100 Billie Quotes
#1. I really like Billie Holiday's husky voice, and I'd definitely like to find out more about her.
Michelle Ryan
#2. The kid at 9 or 10 who knows who Billie Holiday is ... that's the coolest thing ever.
Robbie Robertson
#3. I learned how to dance every move of 'Billie Jean.'
Rain
#4. And in the background of Early's story was her voice. Her soul. Her sadness and longing. Because when it's raining, it's always Billie Holiday. p. 81
Clare Vanderpool
#5. It took me a while to see that the contrast between the racism directed at Billie and the compassion offered to addicted white stars like Judy Garland was not some weird misfiring of the drug war - it was part of the point.
Johann Hari
#6. Daddy named me Billie Jo. He wanted a boy. Instead, he got a long legged girl with a wide mouth with cheekbones like bicycle handles. He got a redheaded, freckle faced, narrow-hipped girl with a fondness for apples and hunger for playing fierce piano.
Karen Hesse
#7. 'Billie Jean' was a negative dance song, and that was one of the best dance songs ever.
Theophilus London
#8. I am a father. My son's name is Max and my daughter's name is Billie Grace. Twelve years ago Max was born with Down Syndrome. His journey has been complicated by infantile seizures, sleep apnea, dietary challenges and now, puberty!
John C. McGinley
#9. Louis Armstrong on Mondays, Frank Sinatra on Wednesdays, Glenn Miller on Fridays, and Mozart on Sundays. Unless it was raining. If it's raining, it's always Billie Holiday.
Clare Vanderpool
#10. Billie Katherine Lourd Is the daughter of Carrie Fisher and Brian Lourd. She thinks she would do a good job playing Princess Leia. But really, she wouldn't. -Anonymous
Anonymous
#11. I felt just the way Billie Holiday sounded, like I'd cried all I could and it wasn't enough.
Janet Fitch
#12. Billie and I did wonders for women's tennis. They owe me a piece of their checks.
Bobby Riggs
#13. I had no desire to become a singer until I heard Billie Holiday. The first time I heard her on a record, it was a revelation. She sounded like a woman singing about herself.
Susannah McCorkle
#14. I got to live out my 11-year-old fantasies - I got to go on stage with Green Day. Billie Joe called my name from the stage. 'Dookie' was the first album I ever bought. I covered the whole of 'Nimrod' and he'd heard it. That was like the 11-year-old girl dreamed.
Florence Welch
#15. By the way, Reb, about the singing. What gives? Walt Whitman sang the body electric. Billie Holiday sang the blues. You sang ... everything. You could sing the phone book. I would call and say how are you feeling, and you'd answer, The old gray rabbi, ain't what he used to be ...
Mitch Albom
#16. I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She's someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That's what I do, too, so I think that's a great comparison.
Erykah Badu
#17. I listen to music mostly in the evening. I've come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday.
Jeannette Walls
#18. I think Billie is the kind of girl who would let her hips swing loose.
Judy Holliday
#19. My mother was a stout woman with a man's name - Billie. She was plain-faced with honest eyes - no black grease by the lash line, no blue powder on the lids, eyebrows not plucked up high and thin.
Charles M. Blow
#20. We have a society in which men sexualize women, period. If you don't want male attention, it makes total sense you'd do everything to your dress and physicality to not be sexualized. But I see that changing dramatically. Now, [younger lesbians] look more like Paris Hilton than Billie Jean King.
Jackie Warner
#21. I love oldies just kind of sweet, slinky, Fifties music. The slow stuff. And Billie Holiday.
Nastassja Kinski
#22. I like singers like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.
Andy Morris
#23. I don't see no more Billie Holidays, no more Marvin Gayes, no more Smokey Robinsons. I don't even see no more Nirvanas.
Wyclef Jean
#24. Under a pulsating full moon, the gussied-up Billie Jean King National Tennis Center seems much softer and prettier at night, with the fountains bubbling and fans without tickets to the big stadium sitting in the plaza and watching a big screen.
George Vecsey
#25. I grew up listening to Beethoven and old jazz singers like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Anita O'Day. But those were, like, the only women I listened to - I hated women pop singers.
Sophie B. Hawkins
#26. If you're as intelligent as I think, you'll back away and give him time to examine his true desires. He's so busy fulfilling everyone else's; he has no idea what he wants."
"I've been under the impression that he wanted me," Billie said coldly, "or I wouldn't be here.
Shelby Reed
#27. The principal furniture in Billie's mind was a good-sized bed.
Budd Schulberg
#28. I'm probably the only one in the world you can name that's worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. 'Fly Me to the Moon' was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I'm the only one.
Quincy Jones
#29. I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.
Bob Iger
#30. Y'know, when I first started listening to punk rock music, I used to get my fucking ass kicked for it! I was known as a fucking freak! But now I'm amongst many many many freaks here with me tonight!
- Billie Joe Armstrong,Stay The Night, Reading Festival 2013
Green Day
#31. You don't get Billie Joe Armstrong's autograph on your forehead without following your instincts.
Gordon Korman
#32. My mother used to play nothing but Billie Holiday.
Etta James
#33. Because I was a tennis player, Billie Jean King was a hero of mine.
Sally Ride
#34. When they thought of me, they always remembered the vacuous Billie Dawn. It was as simple as that.
Judy Holliday
#35. I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.
Madeleine Peyroux
#36. I was inspired by Billie Holliday, and I really liked Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las because she wore tight trousers and a waistcoat on top - she looked hot.
Suzi Quatro
#37. Earth is a homicide victim. We lose our children. There are wars. Disease. And God comes strolling by like a cosmic Billie Burke.
William Peter Blatty
#39. Yeah. My singing and my songs were very influenced by all of that. People would come up to me and ask, Is that a Billie Holiday song? I'd say, No, it's my song. The lyrics would be in my style, but the songs would be very jazzy.
Regina Spektor
#40. I was a 12 year old kid in Northern Idaho listening to Billie Holiday and Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole. This whole genre of music is a part of who I am.
Cheyenne Jackson
#41. I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.
Tony Bennett
#42. Is this your girl?" she asks, not waiting for an answer. "She's breathtaking."
"You're my new favorite person," Billie giggles.
Rebecca Harris
#43. Billie knew all. And, terrible though the fact is as an indictment of the male sex, when a woman knows all, there is invariably trouble ahead for some man.
P.G. Wodehouse
#44. I feel like it's really kind of a sit-down album, much in the same way I imagine Billie Holiday or someone sitting down in the studio and singing.
Lucinda Williams
#45. And when we pressed our heads to each other's hearts how did we not hear Carmen McRae singing? In Angela's fisted hands, Billie Holiday staggered past us and we didn't know her name. Nina Simone told us how beautiful we were and we didn't hear her voice.
Jacqueline Woodson
#47. I did a rendition of 'Billie Jean' which is on my Soundcloud. I put it on Twitter, and it got about 3000 hits that day.
Idris Elba
#48. I guess my biggest influence was actually my Grandfather. He used to play old records on vinyl, and would play old jazz and soul music like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and The Rat Pack and swing music.
Ella Henderson
#49. John Coltrane was an addict; Billie Holiday was an addict; Eugene O'Neill was an addict. What would America be without addicts and post-addicts who make such grand contributions to our society?
Cornel West
#50. Probably to me the greatest singer, female voice, is Billie Holiday. And one of the most moving for me, I don't know why - maybe it's nostalgia, maybe because my life is one of constant partying, whatever.
Wole Soyinka
#51. There isn't an audience in the world that Billie Joe can't command.
Mike Dirnt
#52. These are the cafeteria ladies. I call them Millie, Billie, and Tilly. I think they're part of a government program to get rid of the middle school population in this country, one lunch at a time.
James Patterson
#53. My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.
Yael Naim
#54. No, Mama. The sweetest hallelujah will be when Billie can walk in the front door of any place she pleases, and nobody will tell her she doesn't belong.
Elaine Hussey
#55. All or nothing at all. If it's love there is no in-between. Billie
Lauren Blakely
#56. I've made my own music, and the way I've always described it is Peggy Lee with an electric guitar, or Billie Holiday with some PJ Harvey in there.
Evan Rachel Wood
#57. It was exciting just to stand in front of the hallowed ground of Birdland that had been blessed by John Coltrane, or the Five Spot on St. Mark's Place where Billie Holiday used to sing, where Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman opened the field of jazz like human can openers.
Patti Smith
#58. The wolves howl bluer than Billie Holliday, but they don't spoil my song.
Jeanette Lynes
#59. I loved Billie Holiday more than any other person other than myself on the stage. Yeah, I do.
Abbey Lincoln
#60. When I first studied Billie Holiday's life story years ago, I admit that I was quite judgmental.
Rebecca Ferguson
#61. In singing, there's a vibration that comes from deep down inside, literally from your sex. When you put out that vibration, people can feel it. Billie Holiday does it. Peggy Lee does it. It's very hot.
Elizabeth Berkley
#62. I was trying to do Billie Holiday, because she was the voice to be heard at that time.
Ruth Brown
#63. Think what you want about me Billie. You're the only part of my life that hasn't been a lie.
Shelby Reed
#64. You sleep okay, sweetie?"
"Miss my teddy," Billie replied.
Personally, I thought Detective Mitch Lawson was far superior to a tiny pink teddy bear but I wasn't six years old.
Kristen Ashley
#65. I know it's going to sound funny, but I know you've been hanging around with that Billie Marsh, so maybe it won't be strange after all. Would you be my best man - or, I don't know, my best lady?
Anna Godbersen
#66. There's the house where that little red-haired girl lives ... Maybe she'll see me, and come rushing out to thank me for the Christmas card I sent her ... Maybe she'll even give me a hug ... Maybe Billie Jean King will call me tonight, and invite me out to dinner.
Charles M. Schulz
#67. fun challenges. Losses inspire them to work harder to improve and pressure moments of a match are longed for rather than dreaded. As Billie Jean King said in the title of her recent book, "Pressure is a Privilege.
Greg Moran
#68. So does nobody care about Ireland?"
"Nobody. Neither King Louis, nor King Billie, nor King James." He nodded thoughtfully. "The fate of Ireland will be decided by men not a single one of whom gives a damn about her. That is her tragedy.
Edward Rutherfurd
#69. I never enjoyed making videos, even though the 'Total Eclipse' video was nominated for a Grammy along with the song. We lost out to the 'Billie Jean' video.
Bonnie Tyler
#70. I don't know video games.The last video game I played, apart from Dance Dance Revolution at Jeremy's house, which I was very good at - Scarlett [Johansson] and I will always have "Billie Jean" - was Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo. I'm from the Dark Ages.
Joss Whedon
#71. Clara said that Billie Holiday woke up crying. Clara said that if you sing the blues, you know that if you can't make friends with grief, you've got to at least make way for it.
Amy Bloom
#72. When Billie Holiday sings a song, I hear the song, but I always hear her and her truth.
Tom Wopat
#73. What I loved with Billie Holiday is she had a good way of parlaying the sorrow with a positive musical twist.
Rebecca Ferguson
#74. I love to sing old Motown songs to myself, or some Patti Smith Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday. That gets me in the mood for singing.
Siobhan Fahey
#75. My great hero is Billie Holiday, and I've always wanted to do an album of standards with a piano-led quartet.
Tim Curry
#76. Nobody is going to notice Billie. People like us are invisible.
Elaine Hussey
#77. I'd love to see a Nirvana biopic. I loved them when I was younger. I really like jazz music, so I'd like to see a Billie Holiday biopic - she was a fascinating woman.
Antonia Thomas
#78. When Billie Holiday came15 to London in the 1950s, she was amazed. They "are civilized about it and they have no narcotics problem at all," she explained. "One day America is going to smarten up and do the
Johann Hari
#79. I went to a Catholic all-girls school, and we would play cassettes of music we liked, and when it was my turn, they would laugh at my choices. I would play Billie Holliday, Elmore James and Howlin' Wolf, but it was fine; if I had to listen to their choices, they had to listen to mine.
Imelda May
#80. I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.
Ahmet Ertegun
#81. When I was around 19 years old, working in the college library, I was talking to a friend of mine and this older woman interrupted and said "You're too young to know about Billie Holiday." My response was "I'm too young to know about Shakespeare, too ... should I not read him?
Wanda Lea Brayton
#82. I love the idea of having a kid who says, 'Yeah, of course I knew about Billie Holiday and Johnny Cash when I was nine years old.'
Robbie Robertson
#83. Can't I be purple?" Lady Alexandra asked.
Billie looked at her as if she'd asked to have the Magna Carta revised.
Julia Quinn
#84. Billie Holiday's voice was the voice of living intensity of soul in the true sense of that greatly abused word.
Leonard Feather
#85. I really do love bluesy-jazzy music, so I love Etta James, B.B. King and Billie Holiday. I love that they have soul in their voices - I think that's something important is having.
Bridgit Mendler
#86. The one thing about Billie is he will snap and rip your head off if you point anything out at all other than how beautiful he is and how nice he looks today.
Tre Cool
#87. From the looks of it, he spent a lot of time outdoors and liked to be prepared, both big pluses in Billie's book.
Elaine Hussey
#88. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me.
Frank Sinatra
#89. Billie laughed at that, full and throaty, and once again she became so incandescently beautiful that George was half-tempted to throw a blanket over her, just to stop anyone else from wanting her.
Julia Quinn
#90. If I hear a record once, I usually never listen to it again. I rarely listen to music - unless it's Billie Holiday.
Barbra Streisand
#91. They walked off down the hall in the direction of a sign that said Colored Waiting Room. Billie guessed white folks didn't have to wait.
Elaine Hussey
#92. Stupid girls run upstairs, stupid girls run upstairs," she's saying to herself, turning to pull Ben with her up the aluminum steps, Billie Jean just feet behind them
Stephen Graham Jones
#93. I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling, but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday, that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person, this singer, this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.
Erykah Badu
#94. Intimate singing had a wonderful style in the '30s and '40s. It came out of Broadway and the jazz of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday. But Sinatra created the best romantic era that we've ever had.
Tony Bennett
#95. The first time I heard a Billie Holiday record, I thought, 'What's so great about Billie Holiday?'
Diana Ross
#96. A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.
Billie Jean King
#97. I was very similar at 19. I wanted something to happen in life, I wanted a bit more. I wanted to find someone who could challenge my ideas. So I definitely tapped into that.
Billie Piper
#98. It's just really important that we start celebrating our differences. Let's start tolerating first, but then we need to celebrate our differences.
Billie Jean King
#99. What annoys the hell out of me is the arrogance of some people. They don't even listen to our music, they decided in advance that they don't like it.
Billie Joe Armstrong
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