How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?
NINA SIMONETomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn’t recognize my voice.
More Nina Simone Quotes
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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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I try to swim every damn day I can, and I’ve learned to scuba dive and snorkel.
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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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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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Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.
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Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I’m lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.
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I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.
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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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You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.
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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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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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You don’t have to live next to me / Just give me my equality.
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Desegregation is a joke.
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To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that’s not what I play. I play black classical music.
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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 have a cultured manner of speaking.
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There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.
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You’ve got to learn to leave the table When love’s no longer being served”.
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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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Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I’m singing her music or not.
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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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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.
NINA SIMONE -
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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What is love but a prelude to sorrow with heartache ahead for your goal.
NINA SIMONE -
Since I was three I’ve been playing the piano. I’ve been onstage.
NINA SIMONE -
It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution – real girl’s talk.
NINA SIMONE