Billie Holiday, a popular and tragic figure in jazz, was a gifted singer with an amazing voice and talent whose personal life was chaotic and troubled.

Selected Billie Holiday Quotations

• I never hurt nobody but myself and thats nobodys business but my own.

• Im always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where Ive been.

• Youve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn bodys sermon on how to behave.

• Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know whats more than enough.

• If I dont have friends, then I aint got nothin.

• Don`t threaten me with love, baby. Let`s just go walking in the rain.

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

• 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.

• Sometimes its worse to win a fight than to lose.

• 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.

• People dont understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.

• I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. Thats all I know.

• If Im going to sing like someone else, then I dont need to sing at all.

• You can`t copy anybody and end with anything.

If you copy, it means youre working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and its got to be that way in music or it isnt music.

• No two people on earth are alike, and its got to be that way in music or it isnt music.

• I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids.

I started working when I was six years old.

• 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.

• All dope can do for you is kill you... the long hard way.

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