Quotes from Billie Holiday

Love is just like a faucet,It turns off and on,And sometimes when you think it's on, baby,It has turned off and gone.

Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.

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.

All dope can do for you is kill you the long hard way. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'll be seeing you In every lovely summer's day In everything that's light and gay I'll always think of you that way I'll find you in the morning sun And when the night is new I'll be looking at the moon But I'll be seeing you

I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces all day through.

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

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.

When you sing, always tell the truth.

Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.