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" I didn't get interested in music. It was a gift from God. "

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" What I was interested in was conveying an emotional message, which means using everything you've got inside you sometimes to barely make a note, or if you have to strain to sing, you sing. "

" You get racism crossing the street; it's in the very fabric of American society. "

" I think that the artists who don't get involved in preaching messages probably are happier - but you see, I have to live with Nina, and that is very difficult. "

" You feel the shame, humiliation, and anger at being just another victim of prejudice, and at the same time, there's the nagging worry that maybe... you're just no good. "

" I have to be composed; I have to be poised. I have to remember what my first piano teacher told me: 'You do not touch that piano until you are ready and until they are ready to listen to you. "

" To me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world. Black people. And I mean that in every sense. "

" I wasn't a jazz player, but a classical musician, and I improvised arrangements of popular songs using classical motifs. "

" As a political weapon, it has helped me for 30 years defend the rights of American blacks and third-world people all over the world, to defend them with protest songs. To move the audience to make them conscious of what has been done to my people around the world. "

" I'm not a blues singer, I'm a diva. "

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

" My daughter is in more competition with me. I never wanted to be bigger than my mother or to challenge her. "

" 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 flirt all the time. I like men! I don't think we can do without them. "

" When I'm on that stage, I assume honor. I assume compensation, and I should. "

" It's an artist's duty to reflect the times in which we live. "

" All the time, there was the weight of my community's expectations on my shoulders. "

" The protest years were over, not just for me but for a whole generation, and in music, just like in politics, many of the greatest talents were dead or in exile, and their place was filled by third-rate imitators. "

" I'm a real rebel with a cause. "

" Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument? That it has notes no other instrument has? It's like being between the keys of a piano. The notes are there, you can sing them, but they can't be found on any instrument. That's like me. I live in between this. I live in both worlds, the black and white world. "

" At this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don't think you can help but be involved. "

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

" 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'll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear. I mean really, no fear! "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Desegregation is a joke. "

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