I believe in racial memory too. I’m sure I’ve got ancient African blood in me that has something to do with what I am.
NINA SIMONETo most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that’s not what I play. I play black classical music.
More Nina Simone Quotes
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Music is the center of my life.
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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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It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution – real girl’s talk.
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I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I’ve done my whole life, without thought.
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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 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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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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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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I try to swim every damn day I can, and I’ve learned to scuba dive and snorkel.
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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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You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.
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Music is an art and art has its own rules.
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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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The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.
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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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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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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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To be young, gifted and black!
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Tomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn’t recognize my voice.
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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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I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I’m not going.
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Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.
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You’ve got to learn to leave the table When love’s no longer being served”.
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That’s a very high goal to have, study eight hours a day to be a concert pianist.
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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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What is love but a prelude to sorrow with heartache ahead for your goal.
NINA SIMONE