"You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave. Everything I am and everything I want out of life goes smack back to that."

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“Discography of Billie Holiday”

“If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you’re out of your mind. There are more kicks the fuck to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung. If you think you need stuff to play music or sing, you’re crazy. It can fix you so you can’t play nothing or sing nothing.”

“t takes a bad woman to be a good godmother.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The Unofficial Billie Holiday Website”

Resonant Thoughts

"“It was not the sense that something had been there. It was the sense that something was still there, palpable but not visible. A sense that the forest was grieving, or that something in it was dying……"

— Lis Wiehl

Literature1961

#nature

"So I think we need a new plan. Next time a country wants to take us on, 'stead of sending bombs, let's try this: send everyone in the country a color television and a satellite dish. And give 'em the …"

— Christopher Titus

Entertainment1964

#time

"If you wish to thoroughly accustom yourself to correct and good positions for your fingers, fasten a frame or a loom divided into squares by threads between your eye and the nude figure which you are …"

— Leonardo da Vinci

Mathematics1452–1519

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"Nothing, then, would prevent him henceforth from living his life, a purely secular life, according to his nature and his habits, without having to ask himself at every moment whether what he had done …"

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Philosophy1880–1946

#life