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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" Desegregation is a joke. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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 want to shake people up so bad, that when they leave a nightclub where I've performed, I just want them to be to pieces. "

" 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. "

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