Nina Simone Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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. — Nina Simone

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. — Nina Simone

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. — Nina Simone

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

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

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. — Nina Simone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't like to go to strange places. — Nina Simone

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

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

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

There's no excuse for the young ... — Nina Simone

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

To be young, gifted and black! — Nina Simone

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? — Nina Simone

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

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. — Nina Simone

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

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

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? — Nina Simone

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

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

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. — Nina Simone

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

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

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. — Nina Simone

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

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

I am just one of the people who is sick of the social order, sick of the establishment, sick to my soul of it all. To me, America's society is nothing but a cancer, and it must be exposed before it can be cured. I am not the doctor to cure it. All I can do is expose the sickness. — Nina Simone

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

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

I'm a real rebel with a cause. — Nina Simone

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. — Nina Simone

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

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

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. — Nina Simone

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

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

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

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

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 — Nina Simone

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. — Nina Simone

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

I'm just human, I have faults like anyone — Nina Simone

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. — 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

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

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

Desegregation is a joke. — Nina Simone

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

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

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 — Nina Simone

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

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. — Nina Simone

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 — Nina Simone

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

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