Billie Holiday

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.

Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.

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

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

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.

No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

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

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

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.

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

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

If I don't have friends then I ain't nothing.

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. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.

In this country, don__ forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There__ no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it__ the worst kind of hell for those who love you.