When a child is gifted, people try to help that child.
NINA SIMONEFrom the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.
More Nina Simone Quotes
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It’s a good time for black people to be alive.
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There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.
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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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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.
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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 the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.
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Since I was three I’ve been playing the piano. I’ve been onstage.
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Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.
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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.
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Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.
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Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.
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If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.
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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 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.
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I look forward to doing my own show, not someone else’s. That’s always been my dream.
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Life is short. People are not easy to know. They’re not easy to know, so if you don’t tell them how you feel, you’re not going to get anywhere, I feel.
NINA SIMONE