Desegregation is a joke.
NINA SIMONEI feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they’re not alone.
More Nina Simone Quotes
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I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.
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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.
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I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they’re not alone.
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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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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 know I’m different, but I don’t think about it.
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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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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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It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution – real girl’s talk.
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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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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 love the classics but there are many new ideas to be made into reality. I’d rather be concerned with my own thing. There are many masters of classical piano so I’ll leave it to them.
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Since I was three I’ve been playing the piano. I’ve been onstage.
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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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Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.
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To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that’s not what I play. I play black classical music.
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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.
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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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I think the rich will eventually have to cave in too, because the economic situation around the world is not gonna tolerate the United States being on top forever.
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My name sounds French but that’s just a stage name.
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My love is like the wind and wild is the wind. Give me more than one caress, satisfy my hungriness. Let the wind blow through your heart for wild is the wind.
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It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day and I’m feeling good.
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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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Tomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn’t recognize my voice.
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I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs and good ones.
NINA SIMONE