Quotes from Nina Simone

What is love but a prelude to sorrow...with heartache ahead for your goal.

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

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.

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.

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.

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.

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.

I love the classics but there are many new ideas to be made into reality. I'd rather be concerned with my own thing. There are many masters of classical piano so I'll leave it to them.

I do love to sing Jacques Brel songs, intensely. I get terribly excited, just by reading a couple of lines in any one of his songs.

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

Desegregation is a joke.

I made wine from the lilac tree/Put my heart in its recipe/It makes me see what I want to see/And be what I want to be

I love to travel to hear different kinds of music.

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

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

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

You've got to learn to leave the table When love's no longer being served.

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.

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

Life is short. People are not easy to know. They're not easy to know, so if you don't tell them how you feel, you're not going to get anywhere, I feel.

I'll tell you what Freedom is to me. No fear.

It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution - real girl's talk.

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

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.