Sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.
Nina SimoneRead
Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
Interpretation
Music deeply influenced Nina Simone's childhood, becoming an integral part of her daily life.
In this quote, Nina Simone reflects on the profound impact that music had on her childhood, suggesting that it was not merely an activity she engaged in, but a fundamental aspect of her existence. She compares the necessity of music in her life to the natural and automatic act of breathing, highlighting its importance and influence in shaping her identity and experiences.
In practice
In a music appreciation class, when discussing the role of music in personal development.
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.
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.
When I was young, I struggled with authorship: with everything the word meant and failed to mean. Irish poetry was heavy with custom. Sometimes at night, when I tried to write, a ghost hand seemed to hold mine. Where could my life, my language fit in?
My father was a taxidermist, not a run-of-the-mill profession for a West Indian immigrant. Having given up on becoming a vet, he settled for working with dead animals rather than live ones. Dad was a true craftsman, an artist.
It's always about the music, never about anything else.
I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.
I don't start a novel until I have lived with the story for awhile to the point of actually writing an outline and after a number of books I've learned that the more time I spend on the outline the easier the book is to write. And if I cheat on the outline I get in trouble with the book.
I took Punk to be the detonation of some slow-fused projectile buried deep in society's flank a decade earlier, and I took it to be, somehow, a sign.
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