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.Collection: Song
Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I'm singing her music or not.Collection: Mother
I don't like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.Collection: Music
I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.Collection: Music
There are all kinds of things that can be done. You can change rhythms, you can change chords, you can change whole concepts. But it will only work, on a record or in a performance, if you can make the people buy it.Collection: People
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.Collection: Piano
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?Collection: Pay
I'm just human, I have faults like anyoneCollection: Faults
I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they're not alone.Collection: Fun
How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?Collection: Artist
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 beCollection: Heart
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.Collection: Memories
Through music you can become sad, joyful, loving, you can learn. You can learn mathematics, touch, pacing... Oh my God! Ooh... Wow... You can see colors through music. Anything!Collection: Color
Music is one of the ways by which you can know everything which is going on in the world. You can feel... through music... Whew... you can feel the vibrations of everybody in the world at any given moment.Collection: World
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.Collection: Communication
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.Collection: Matter
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.Collection: Music
Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Expression
Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.Collection: Sorrow
It's a good time for black people to be alive.Collection: People
What is love but a prelude to sorrow...with heartache ahead for your goal.Collection: Love
It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution - real girl's talk.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Cat
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.Collection: Philadelphia
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.Collection: Effort