Nina Simone

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.

— Nina Simone

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.

— Nina Simone

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is no longer being served.

— Nina Simone

I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs... and good ones.

— Nina Simone

I try to swim every damn day I can, and I've learned to scuba dive and snorkel.

— Nina Simone

Tomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn't recognize my voice.

— Nina Simone

I don't like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.

— Nina Simone

I look forward to doing my own show, not someone else's. That's always been my dream.

— Nina Simone

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

— Nina Simone

I would like a man now who is rich, and who can give me a boat - a sailboat. I want to…

— Nina Simone

What I was interested in was conveying an emotional message, which means using everything you've got inside you sometimes to barely make…

— Nina Simone

It doesn't matter to me what is going on today because my music encompasses every kind of mood that exists in human…

— Nina Simone

I believe in racial memory too. I'm sure I've got ancient African blood in me that has something to do with what…

— Nina Simone

Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I'm singing her music or not.

— Nina Simone

Through music you can become sad, joyful, loving, you can learn. You can learn mathematics, touch, pacing... Oh my God! Ooh... Wow...…

— Nina Simone

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about... Now it was dedicated to freedom,…

— Nina Simone

Music is an art and art has its own rules. And one of them is that you must pay more attention to…

— Nina Simone

The protest years were over, not just for me but for a whole generation, and in music, just like in politics, many…

— Nina Simone

There are all kinds of things that can be done. You can change rhythms, you can change chords, you can change whole…

— Nina Simone

I am particular about the seating of the audience - also about how much money they pay - but most of all…

— Nina Simone

Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument? That it has notes no other instrument has? It's like…

— Nina Simone

I was reared in the church from the age of three. I've played piano since I was three. I performed at revivals…

— Nina Simone

You can't be different if you look at it. Being gifted is different. I had that in my piano playing. I'm very…

— Nina Simone

The Beatles are lucky, very lucky. But what has happened to them has nothing to do with them, in a sense. They…

— Nina Simone

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking.

— Nina Simone

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

— Nina Simone

Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage.

— Nina Simone

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

— Nina Simone

When a child is gifted, people try to help that child.

— Nina Simone

I don't like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.

— Nina Simone

That's a very high goal to have, study eight hours a day to be a concert pianist.

— Nina Simone

How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

— Nina Simone

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

— Nina Simone

You don't have to live next to me / Just give me my equality.

— Nina Simone

Many times I feel different like a different person.

— Nina Simone

My name sounds French but that's just a stage name.

— Nina Simone

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

— Nina Simone

I know I'm different, but I don't think about it.

— Nina Simone

Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.

— Nina Simone

When I choose material for an album all these songs I grew up with pour into my head.

— Nina Simone