My singing, if you want to call it that is merely another medium of expression. Just an instrument I play. That’s how I see my voice.
NINA SIMONEMy singing, if you want to call it that is merely another medium of expression. Just an instrument I play. That’s how I see my voice.
More Nina Simone Quotes
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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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My love is like the wind and wild is the wind. Give me more than one caress, satisfy my hungriness. Let the wind blow through your heart for wild is the wind.
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Through music you can become sad, joyful, loving, you can learn. You can learn mathematics, touch, pacing Oh my God! Ooh Wow You can see colors through music. Anything!
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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 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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Music is a gift and a burden I’ve had since I can remember who I was.
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Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.
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I demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.
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I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.
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The worst thing about that kind of prejudice is that while you feel hurt and angry and all the rest of it, it feeds you self-doubt. You start thinking, perhaps I am not good enough.
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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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Once I understood Bach’s music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.
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I don’t like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.
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Birds flying high you know how I feel Sun in the sky you know how I feel Breeze driftin’ on by you know how I feel And this old world is a new world And a bold world For me And I’m feeling good I’m feeling good.
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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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Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.
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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’m sorry that I did not become the world’s first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.
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I don’t like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.
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What is love but a prelude to sorrow with heartache ahead for your goal.
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How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?
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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 was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.
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It’s a good time for black people to be alive.
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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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Life is short. People are not easy to know. They’re not easy to know, so if you don’t tell them how you feel, you’re not going to get anywhere, I feel.
NINA SIMONE