Quotes About Billie Holiday

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

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

Abbey Lincoln

#6. When I first studied Billie Holiday's life story years ago, I admit that I was quite judgmental.

Rebecca Ferguson

#7. 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

#8. I was trying to do Billie Holiday, because she was the voice to be heard at that time.

Ruth Brown

#9. 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

#10. When Billie Holiday sings a song, I hear the song, but I always hear her and her truth.

Tom Wopat

#11. What I loved with Billie Holiday is she had a good way of parlaying the sorrow with a positive musical twist.

Rebecca Ferguson

#12. 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

#13. My great hero is Billie Holiday, and I've always wanted to do an album of standards with a piano-led quartet.

Tim Curry

#14. The kid at 9 or 10 who knows who Billie Holiday is ... that's the coolest thing ever.

Robbie Robertson

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. Billie Holiday's voice was the voice of living intensity of soul in the true sense of that greatly abused word.

Leonard Feather

#20. 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

#21. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me.

Frank Sinatra

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. The first time I heard a Billie Holiday record, I thought, 'What's so great about Billie Holiday?'

Diana Ross

#25. I really like Billie Holiday's husky voice, and I'd definitely like to find out more about her.

Michelle Ryan

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. I felt just the way Billie Holiday sounded, like I'd cried all I could and it wasn't enough.

Janet Fitch

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. I love oldies just kind of sweet, slinky, Fifties music. The slow stuff. And Billie Holiday.

Nastassja Kinski

#36. I like singers like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.

Andy Morris

#37. 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

#38. I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.

Bob Iger

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. Billie Holiday I never met, but I love her music.

Nichelle Nichols

#47. 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

#48. My mother used to play nothing but Billie Holiday.

Etta James

#49. 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

#50. And when you're poor, you grow up fast.

Billie Holiday

#51. Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain.

Billie Holiday

#52. Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.

Billie Holiday

#53. There's no damn business like show business - you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

Billie Holiday

#54. You can't copy anybody and end with anything. 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

#55. 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

#56. I try to improvise like Les Young, Louis Armstrong or someone else I admire. What comes out is what I feel.

Billie Holiday

#57. 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

#58. 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. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.

Billie Holiday

#59. If I don't have friends, then I ain't got nothing.

Billie Holiday

#60. I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been.

Billie Holiday

#61. 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

#62. 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

#63. One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.

Billie Holiday

#64. When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

Billie Holiday

#65. I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.

Billie Holiday

#66. 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

#67. A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

Billie Holiday

#68. I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.

Billie Holiday

#69. 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

#70. God has blessed you when he lets you believe in somebody.

Billie Holiday

#71. The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.

Billie Holiday

#72. 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

#73. I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm playing a horn ... What comes out is what I feel.

Billie Holiday

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. Don't be in such a hurry.

Billie Holiday

#77. 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

#78. 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

#79. The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.

Billie Holiday

#80. 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

#81. Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.

Billie Holiday

#82. I never sing a song the same way twice.

Billie Holiday

#83. 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

#84. I've been told that nobody sings the word 'hunger' like I do.

Billie Holiday

#85. If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.

Billie Holiday

#86. 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

#87. 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

#88. 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

#89. Love is like a faucet: it turns on and off.

Billie Holiday

#90. When you sing, always tell the truth.

Billie Holiday

#91. The only reason they're out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.

Billie Holiday

#92. 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

#93. I can only sing songs my way. I don't know any other way.

Billie Holiday

#94. I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know.

Billie Holiday

#95. If I don't have friends, then I ain't nothing.

Billie Holiday

#96. If nobody can learn from the past,
then there's no point in raking it up.

Billie Holiday