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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.

Nina Simone

I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.
NINA SIMONE

Assosiation Awareness Drinking Life Music
There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.
NINA SIMONE

Excuse Hero Known People Young
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

Explanation Expression Feeling Poetry Soul Stage Yourself
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.
NINA SIMONE

Couple Excitement Intense Love Myself Reading
Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.
NINA SIMONE

Life Music Thinking Way
I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.
NINA SIMONE

Fear Freedom Myself
Many times I feel different like a different person.
NINA SIMONE

Different Feeling Person Time
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.
NINA SIMONE

Myself See Tree Wine
What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.
NINA SIMONE

Change Known Question Sanity Togetherness
To be young, gifted and black!
NINA SIMONE

Black One Liner Young
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

Alone Feeling Listening Myself People
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

Herself Leadership Misunderstanding Singing Writing Yourself
We have ordered things so long in a certain way, we are numb. Nobody dares question it. This is what is wrong, symbolically, with America.
NINA SIMONE

Dare Order Question Symbol Wrong
Tomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn’t recognize my voice.
NINA SIMONE

Different Identity Myself Recognition Voice
It doesn’t matter to me what is going on today because my music encompasses every kind of mood that exists in human beings. That’s my stick.
NINA SIMONE

Existence Kind Music Myself
You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.
NINA SIMONE

Artist Help Reflection Time
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.
NINA SIMONE

Angry Enough Kind Prejudice Worst Yourself
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.
NINA SIMONE

Awareness Different Gift Myself Thankful Work
You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.
NINA SIMONE

Learning Love Serve Table Yourself
I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I’ve done my whole life, without thought.
NINA SIMONE

Activity Life Myself Singer
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

Love Man Myself Pay Rich Sea Water
It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution – real girl’s talk.
NINA SIMONE

Reality Revolution Talk
This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.
NINA SIMONE

Live World Yourself
I’m a real rebel with a cause.
NINA SIMONE

Reality Reason Rebel
It’s a good time for black people to be alive.
NINA SIMONE

Alive Black People Time
Music is the center of my life.
NINA SIMONE

Life Music One Liner
I know I’m different, but I don’t think about it.
NINA SIMONE

Different Myself Thinking

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 demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Nina Simone Quotes