Billie Holiday

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

There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

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

You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, you’re working without any real feeling.

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

I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there’s a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don’t like that. I listen to everything.

Everyone is working who should be.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

Albert King wasn’t my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues!

Play what you know and then play above that.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I ‘d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

That’s the thing about jazz: it’s free flowing, it comes from your soul.

I want people to walk away with the same joy, hope and love that I put into my music.

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He’s still a nice young man, only confused.

Keep on listening and tapping your feet.

After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.

Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.

Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.