Jazz 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.
NINA SIMONEYou 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.
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.
NINA SIMONE -
My name sounds French but that’s just a stage name.
NINA SIMONE -
I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I’ve done my whole life, without thought.
NINA SIMONE -
I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they’re not alone.
NINA SIMONE -
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.
NINA SIMONE -
How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it.
NINA SIMONE -
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?
NINA SIMONE -
I don’t like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.
NINA SIMONE -
I know I’m different, but I don’t think about it.
NINA SIMONE -
That’s a very high goal to have, study eight hours a day to be a concert pianist.
NINA SIMONE -
I demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.
NINA SIMONE -
Tomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn’t recognize my voice.
NINA SIMONE -
I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I’m not going.
NINA SIMONE -
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.
NINA SIMONE -
I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.
NINA SIMONE






