Nina Simone quotes:

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.

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.

This may be a dream, but I'll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.

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.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

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.

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.

I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping.

There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.

Birds flying high you know how I feel Sun in the sky you know how I feel Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel And this old world is a new world And a bold world For me And I'm feeling good I'm feeling good

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.

I try to swim every damn day I can, and I've learned to scuba dive and snorkel.

Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.

It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution - real girl's talk.

When I was studying... there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist.

Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I'm lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.

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?

I'm a real rebel with a cause.

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.

From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.

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

I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I'm not going.

It is an artist's duty to reflect the times.

As I got older though I wanted a life of my own. The classical training was very demanding and thorough. It was a very sheltered existence. Even though I heard blues and gospel on the radio sometimes, it was always back to the piano and study and give recitals.

By the time I was eight I was taking classical piano lessons and I wanted to be a concert pianist. But that didn't work out. I graduated from high school and my formal education ended.

Desegregation is a joke.

Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I'm singing her music or not.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.

How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

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

I am particular about the seating of the audience - also about how much money they pay - but most of all where they are seated. If I am going to sing something intimate, who am I going to sing it to?

I applied for a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I knew I was good enough, but they turned me down. And it took me about six months to realize it was because I was black. I never really got over that jolt of racism at the time.

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.

I can read and arrange, but I can't write.

I can't stand loud guitars that make me deaf.

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

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.

I do not believe in mixing of the races. You can quote me. I don't believe in it, and I never have. I've never changed. I've never changed my hair. I've never changed my color, I have always been proud of myself, and my fans are proud of me for remaining the way I've always been. I married a white man one time, but he was a creep

I don't like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.

I don't like to go to strange places.

I don't like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.

I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I've dreamed.

I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they're not alone.

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

I have a cultured manner of speaking.

I know I'm different, but I don't think about it.

I look forward to doing my own show, not someone else's. That's always been my dream.

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.

I love to travel to hear different kinds of music.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs... and good ones.

I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don't think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I've done my whole life, without thought.

I was reared in the church from the age of three. I've played piano since I was three. I performed at revivals and for my people around North Carolina for several years. People around town collected money to send me to school.

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.

If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.

If I want to take a particular form of blues somewhere else I have the equipment to do it but I never even thought of it.

I'm a nut for Bach as a composer.

I'm just human, I have faults like anyone

I'm sorry that I did not become the world's first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.

It's a good time for black people to be alive.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day...and I'm feeling good.

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.

It's time to take a look at my failures and stop calling them successes. Now I can start working at something that can use me best.

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking.

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.

Many times I feel different like a different person.

Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.

Music is a gift and a burden I've had since I can remember who I was.

Music is the center of my life.

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.

My name sounds French but that's just a stage name.

My people have very subtle slang, inflections and ways of saying things that has little to do with words. If you're from the same place, you'll feel the jargon and know exactly what's happening. Same with any neighborhood cat. What he sees and hears and feels and lives makes him what he is. That's what blues is.

My singing, if you want to call it that is merely another medium of expression. Just an instrument I play. That's how I see my voice.

Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage.

Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage. My mother is an Evangelist and I used to play the piano at her revival meetings.

Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

That is why we fly from the inner void, since God might steal into it. It is not the pursuit of pleasure and the aversion for effort which causes sin, but fear of God. We know that we cannot see him face to face without dying, and we do not want to die.

That's a very high goal to have, study eight hours a day to be a concert pianist.

Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.

There's no excuse for the young...

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.

To be young, gifted and black!

Tomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn't recognize my voice.

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.

When a child is gifted, people try to help that child.

When I choose material for an album all these songs I grew up with pour into my head.

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.

You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.

You don't have to live next to me / Just give me my equality.

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.

You've got to learn to leave the table When love's no longer being served".

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

What is love but a prelude to sorrow...with heartache ahead for your goal.