It’s time to take a look at my failures and stop calling them successes. Now I can start working at something that can use me best.
NINA SIMONEI don’t like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.
More Nina Simone Quotes
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I have a cultured manner of speaking.
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Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.
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Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.
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It is difficult to retain your standards with the pressure of trying to make money, which always has its rules. It’s hard to walk the tightrope of doing what you think is your best and making money at it.
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I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don’t think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.
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I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.
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What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.
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You can’t be different if you look at it. Being gifted is different. I had that in my piano playing. I’m very thankful for that. I’m very aware of that. The style and what I fed is just me. I never worked at it. It just happened.
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You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.
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Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I’m singing her music or not.
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I’m a real rebel with a cause.
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Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band’s lead singer, Eric Burdon. “So you’re the honky,” she said, “who stole my song and got a hit out of it?
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My job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I’m trying to go to see Nelson Mandela.
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I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs and good ones.
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Music is an art and art has its own rules.
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You don’t have to live next to me / Just give me my equality.
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You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.
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Music is one of the ways by which you can know everything which is going on in the world. You can feel through music. Whew you can feel the vibrations of everybody in the world at any given moment.
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I know I’m different, but I don’t think about it.
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I love the classics but there are many new ideas to be made into reality. I’d rather be concerned with my own thing. There are many masters of classical piano so I’ll leave it to them.
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It’s logical that people from bad times will reflect their feelings in their communication. Music is part of the communication. If you lived it, you can do it.
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I would like a man now who is rich, and who can give me a boat – a sailboat. I want to own it and let him pay for it. My first love is the sea and water, not music. Music is second.
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Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
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If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.
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I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.
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It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution – real girl’s talk.
NINA SIMONE