Nina Simone

“You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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'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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”