Nina Simone

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

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

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

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

This may be a dream, but I'll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I'm just human, I have faults like anyone