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

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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

" Desegregation is a joke. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "