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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. "

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" 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. "

Nina Simone

Listen

You

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

" Desegregation is a joke. "

Nina Simone

Joke

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nina Simone

World

People

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

Nina Simone

Beat

Think

" 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. "