Desegregation is a joke.
NINA SIMONEI had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.
More Nina Simone Quotes
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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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I’m a real rebel with a cause.
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I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.
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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.
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Music is an art and art has its own rules.
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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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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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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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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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This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.
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What is love but a prelude to sorrow with heartache ahead for your goal.
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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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Since I was three I’ve been playing the piano. I’ve been onstage.
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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.
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Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
NINA SIMONE