Lady Sings the Blues
Billie Holiday
Top 10 Best Quotes
“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.”
“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.”
“Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.”
“I guess I’m not the only one who heard their first good jazz in a whorehouse. But I never tried to make anything of it. If I’d heard Louis and Bessie at a Girl Scout jamboree, I’d have loved it just the same.”
“Tony kept my job open. He offered to backstop me with the money I needed. But it was the way he did it I’ll never forget, with love and respect, like a human being holding out his hand to someone who needed it.”
“If you find a tune and it’s got something to do with you, you don’t have to evolve anything. You just feel it, and when you sing it other people can feel something too.”
“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.”
“It was during my stint at Café Society that a song was born which became my personal protest—“ Strange Fruit.” The germ of the song was in a poem written by Lewis Allen. I first met him at Café Society. When he showed me that poem, I dug it right off. It seemed to spell out all the things that had killed Pop.”
“Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldn't treat them, and then caught them, prosecuted them for not paying their taxes, and then sent them to jail. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs. The jails are full and the problem is getting worse every day. p153”
“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..”
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Book Keywords:
attitude, society, girl, jazz, addiction, prosaic, america, multicultural, experience
