Sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.
Nina SimoneRead
You get racism crossing the street; it's in the very fabric of American society.
Interpretation
Racism is deeply ingrained in American culture and everyday life.
Nina Simone highlights the pervasive nature of racism in American society, suggesting that it is so deeply embedded that it is encountered in mundane activities, such as crossing the street. This statement evokes the idea that racism is not just an overt issue but a subtle, systemic problem that affects individuals' lives at every turn, underscoring the need for societal awareness and change.
In practice
During a lecture on social justice, this quote can be used to illustrate the everyday realities of racism.
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.
My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me - or else that I needn't live much longer.
In the two-room flat where I live in Japan, I try to take time every day to step away from the bombardment of e-mails and opportunities and papers around my desk, for an hour, and just sit on our 30-inch terrace in the sun, reading something sustaining, whether 'The Age of Innocence' or the latest by Colm Toibin.
Faith is being loyal to you unseen reality within
We think that the world is a solid, vivid place, full of shape and colour and solid objects like this table and this microphone and so on, but we actually create that in our heads out of the bits of information that hit the back of our eyeballs or hit our eardrums or hit our tongues or whatever.
The louder our world today is, the deeper God seems to remain in silence. Silence is the language of eternity; noise passes.
Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not.
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