Billie Holiday

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

The music scene is more competitive in the States.

Musicians tell me, if what I’m doing is right, they should never have gone to school.

Miles Davis and John Coltrane were so cool, if alive today global warming wouldn’t be an issue.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

I was a nerd academically. But I was also an athlete and a musician. I never wanted to be shut out of any situation. I think it was that more than anything.

The way a band works is a metaphor for all sorts of collaborative and larger enterprises that people do.

Apparently Jazz is now considered high art and the average person has trouble understanding it.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

Keeping your artistic self as creative as possible is a balancing act.

My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it was all for my audience.

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.

All of the technique doesn’t matter… only if the feeling is right.

If you can’t play the blues, you might as well hang it up.

Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won’t do much because of my age.

Dog spelled backward is God. That’s pretty heavy.