April’s Reviews > Lady Sings the Blues 50th Anniversary Edition > Status Update

"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. And that's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but."

"The law is the law. Technically, using drugs is not against the law; only having them is. This is a setup which encourages frame-ups, informers, and all sorts of dirty work."

"You can get in just as much trouble by being dumb and innocent as you can by breaking the law..."

"Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough..."

"...There was no cure...For the first few days it's just like the Army. You're in quarantine and they test you...Then...you get to take a look at the place..."

"Trouble is a thing I've learned to smell."

"People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it. I've fought....to record a song I loved or wanted to do....Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose..."

"Sometimes I feel twenty and sometimes I feel two hundred, and when you do, no arithmetic can pep you up or slow you down."

"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."

"...Mama may have, Papa may have, but God bless the child that's got his own..."