black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Music is the center of my life.

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

Love Man Myself Pay Rich Sea Water
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 SIMONE

Blood Identity Memories Myself Race
Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.
NINA SIMONE

Abolish Slave Thinking Way
What is love but a prelude to sorrow with heartache ahead for your goal.
NINA SIMONE

Goal Love Sorrow 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
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.
NINA SIMONE

Dedication Excellence Freedom Music Myself Pursue
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 SIMONE

Description Invention Music Myself Play Thinking Way
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

Address Job Myself Popular See Song
I don’t like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.
NINA SIMONE

Addiction Cat Drugs Myself Sound
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

Day Demand Myself Perfection Practice
From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.
NINA SIMONE

Beginning Black Woman
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’m sorry that I did not become the world’s first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.
NINA SIMONE

Happiness Musician Myself Sorry World
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
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
It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution – real girl’s talk.
NINA SIMONE

Reality Revolution Talk

Music is the center of my life.

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Music is the center of my life.

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