Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
NINA SIMONEJazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.
More Nina Simone Quotes
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If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.
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How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?
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I don’t like rap music at all. I don’t think it’s music. It’s just a beat and rapping.
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I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.
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I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs and good ones.
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I know I’m different, but I don’t think about it.
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Since I was three I’ve been playing the piano. I’ve been onstage.
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I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about… Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.
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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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I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I’ve dreamed.
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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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From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.
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I do love to sing Jacques Brel songs, intensely. I get terribly excited, just by reading a couple of lines in any one of his songs.
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I made wine from the lilac tree/Put my heart in its recipe/It makes me see what I want to see/And be what I want to be.
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We have ordered things so long in a certain way, we are numb. Nobody dares question it. This is what is wrong, symbolically, with America.
NINA SIMONE