Billie Holiday Quotes

The blues is life itself.

You don't have to live the blues to play the blues.

I write poems like some people sing in the bathroom.

Freestyling helps me portray the emotion that I'm feeling right there instead of writing it at home and having to add to it.

I believe that Judy Garland's artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: 'oh, she brought so much of her life to her music', I don't really believe that. I believe that she didn't have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

The way to art was not to think too clearly, not to plan things out, but to follow where your heart and emotions led.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

You can't overthink the music. Mood and intensity can't be manufactured. The blues isn't about structure; it's what you bring to it. The spontaneity of capturing a specific moment is what drives it.

For me, music is sort of the art that I can't incorporate into my person the way I want to.

Acting isn't something that I think about very consciously, somehow that just doesn't work for me. I just kind of feel my way into it.

I think people pick up on that. You use personal stuff and mix it all in - I definitely pull on that stuff in my acting.

I think you never want to have to go into the scene having to improvise; you want to make sure its working on the page. But I do like to have the ability to try stuff just in the moment, to give it some sort of spontaneity.

Whatever you see me do is spontaneous reactions on stage. It's nothing planned. It's nothing that I got in the room and tried to think of hard. It just happens through feeling.

I think as an actor, or any artist, you move with your moods and you express what's going on for you, and you answer to that voice within that's calling for particular things.

I think that the best way you can get honesty across in your music to connect and relate to people is to be motivated by personal emotions, stories and feelings.

I don't want to think I want to feel!

You know what, I just write what I feel.

You could play probably a span of 50 years of me playing St. Louis Blues, and most of the time it will be different every time.

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.

I am a slave to the rhythm. I am a palette. I just go with the moment. You've got to do it that way because if you're thinking, you're dead. Performing is not about thinking; it's about feeling.

Usually, when I act, I try to forget the words and let them come, and just find my way through them.

Every now and then I'll think of something to put back in the show. I just kind of play it off the top of my head. If I do it that way it keeps it kinda fresh.

I think it's important to be able to write stuff that's personal to you and stuff that you'll really be able to understand what you're singing about and be able to truly sing it. Because if you're singing a song that someone's written for you and you really can't relate to it, it's hard to sing that song.

That's what acting is all about - it's all about bringing truth from your own life, and putting it into your characters. If you have the advantage of using your own life in your work, that's always the way to go.