Nina Simone Quotes

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.

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is no longer being served.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I don't like to go to strange places.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Desegregation is a joke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm just human, I have faults like anyone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'll tell you what Freedom is to me. No fear.

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

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

There's no excuse for the young ...

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

I'm a real rebel with a cause.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be young, gifted and black!

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