Top 100 Quotes About Nina Simone
#1. There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.
Robert Wyatt
#2. We always get back to old soul singers like Nina Simone, and how her recordings sound. Also new music like Tobacco, or people that use a mixture of analog and electronic music.
Jose Gonzalez
#3. I write to music, and Nina Simone is always on my playlist to write to. I mean, she's inspiring. She's truthful and real and raw.
Gina Prince-Bythewood
#4. As far as influences, I listen to a lot of people like Nina Simone and other androgynous voices, almost to make me feel like I'm not alone.
Shamir
#5. When your hair is rising, that's when you know it's a good song - that's happened to me with some artists and some songs, John Lennon songs or when Nina Simone sings. It's great to make those moments yourself.
Jose Gonzalez
#6. If Rihanna stripped it all down morally rather than with her clothes, perhaps we'd get closer to Nina Simone. She's talented, but all we want is to sing the truth. If Britney Spears was to sing closer to her heart, she might have been the new Bobby Gentry or Dolly Parton.
Lou Doillon
#7. I'm very eclectic in my music tastes - anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.
Monica Ali
#8. There's a Nina Simone record that I love, 'Live at Vine Street,' and she sings flat on it. I can imagine she might've told the record label, 'Oh, God, you're not releasing that!' But I'm glad they did.
Damien Rice
#9. I think it's the strength of her music, using art to make a statement. I think it really is. It was not a cheap gift. The gift was an expensive gift for Nina [Simone]. Diamonds are expensive. Her music was expensive. She paid for it, but I think it's her greatest gift.
Nikki Giovanni
#10. I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, "If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on." I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do.
Nikki Giovanni
#11. I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of "I want to tell the people."
Nikki Giovanni
#12. I think that too many strangers were in Nina Simone life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.
Nikki Giovanni
#13. The artist who gave me the most inspiration and direction, especially as a singer - and I absolutely consider myself a singer, 100 percent - is Nina Simone. She's my ultimate pianist-singer-type person.
Rufus Wainwright
#14. I grew up listening to Beethoven and old jazz singers like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Anita O'Day. But those were, like, the only women I listened to - I hated women pop singers.
Sophie B. Hawkins
#15. I prefer her [Nina Simone] jazz period much more so than her folk period.
Nikki Giovanni
#16. That's one of my favorite songs of all time. It's so beautiful. It's an old song, sung by Nina Simone. This is the Cat Power cover. We pushed hard to get it and were lucky. It's so stunning.
Ellen Page
#17. I was responding to one thing for the woman I knew, and there's another thing for what did she give, right. She [Nina Simone] was a great teacher.
Nikki Giovanni
#18. And when we pressed our heads to each other's hearts how did we not hear Carmen McRae singing? In Angela's fisted hands, Billie Holiday staggered past us and we didn't know her name. Nina Simone told us how beautiful we were and we didn't hear her voice.
Jacqueline Woodson
#19. I try to not listen to all the girls I admire musically - like Nina Simone - just so I don't find myself imitating them, even if it's subconsciously.
Lou Doillon
#20. I did a little film called 'Nina,' a small role. I played a French girl who was a nurse to Nina Simone. Zoe Saldana plays Nina.
Alaina Huffman
#21. I'm like a middle-aged person; when my friends go on about modern bands, I don't know what they are talking about. I'm into rock n' roll, like Jimi Hendrix. Not so much because of my parents, who used to play a lot of Nina Simone and older blues, but my brother and sister.
Georgia May Jagger
#22. I think it's fair to say that Nina Simone was a prodigy.
Michel Martin
#23. I wish that she had had a black loon because I don't think that Nina [Simone] did. I have always had - I've been very fortunate - a group of little old ladies that I love and who love me, and who turned and to whom I turn at different times.
Nikki Giovanni
#24. My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.
Yael Naim
#25. I've always sung. I was really into musical theater when I was growing up. As a kid, I listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, actually, on cassette tapes.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw
#26. Nina Simone had such an androgynous voice; the first time I listened to her I thought it was a man, and I'm sure a lot of people listening to me think I'm a woman. Her voice is kinda like the poster child for me.
Shamir
#27. I listen to Radio 4 and put the iPod on shuffle. I like the randomness of, say, the Stones, then something from Nina Simone, Nick Drake or Bob Dylan.
Catherine McCormack
#28. [I listen to] "Uptown Funk", Bruno Mars, sometimes even Nina Simone and Adele. Whatever comes up, whatever floats my boat, whatever makes me tap into something in me to just decompress - I listen to that.
Viola Davis
#29. I just think she was a wonderful woman. What I think of when I think of Nina [Simone] is someone that I could relate to, who didn't want anything from me, that could relate to me because I didn't want anything from her. It was nice.
Nikki Giovanni
#30. I used to go up to her house. She lived upstate [in New York] and I lived in Manhattan; you're living in a lot of noise and my career was being built. For me to spend time with Nina [Simone] is to spend a lot of quiet time.
Nikki Giovanni
#31. Girls are taught to sing high and pretty, like Antony, not low and from the guts like Nina Simone. But we're slowly trying to change that. There are so many things we're not told growing up, and it's our true feminist responsibility to take the truth to the people who need to hear it.
Beth Ditto
#32. People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.
P.J. Harvey
#33. So while you're imitating Al Capone,
I'll be Nina Simone,
And defacating on your microphone
Lauryn Hill
#34. My generation is so used to having our public spaces look like the Starbucks, with the beautiful lighting and the little bit of Nina Simone and my coffee that's blended a certain way from Costa Rica.
Sandra Tsing Loh
#35. I think Nina Simone has had an amazing journey. She was spicy and she had attitude and she didn't care, she wanted her money in a paper bag and don't mess with me and I've been doing some research on that so.
Nia Long
#36. I don't like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.
Nina Simone
#37. Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I'm lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.
Nina Simone
#38. I am just one of the people who is sick of the social order, sick of the establishment, sick to my soul of it all. To me, America's society is nothing but a cancer, and it must be exposed before it can be cured. I am not the doctor to cure it. All I can do is expose the sickness.
Nina Simone
#39. Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.
Nina Simone
#41. I am particular about the seating of the audience - also about how much money they pay - but most of all where they are seated. If I am going to sing something intimate, who am I going to sing it to?
Nina Simone
#42. It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution - real girl's talk.
Nina Simone
#43. To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.
Nina Simone
#44. I'm just human, I have faults like anyone
Nina Simone
#45. What is love but a prelude to sorrow ... with heartache ahead for your goal.
Nina Simone
#47. There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were
Nina Simone
#48. I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I've done my whole life, without thought.
Nina Simone
#49. I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they're not alone.
Nina Simone
#50. 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.
Nina Simone
#51. I'll tell you what Freedom is to me. No fear.
Nina Simone
#53. My love is like the wind and wild is the wind. Give me more than one caress, satisfy my hungriness. Let the wind blow through your heart for wild is the wind.
Nina Simone
#54. Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking.
Nina Simone
#55. I demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.
Nina Simone
#56. I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I'm not going.
Nina Simone
#57. You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.
Nina Simone
#58. Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.
Nina Simone
#59. I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs ... and good ones.
Nina Simone
#60. It's time to take a look at my failures and stop calling them successes. Now I can start working at something that can use me best.
Nina Simone
#61. This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.
Nina Simone
#62. Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I'm singing her music or not.
Nina Simone
#64. You have to learn to get up from the table when love is no longer being served.
Nina Simone
#65. Music is a gift and a burden I've had since I can remember who I was.
Nina Simone
#66. My job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I'm trying to go to see Nelson Mandela.
Nina Simone
#67. Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage. My mother is an Evangelist and I used to play the piano at her revival meetings.
Nina Simone
#68. 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
Nina Simone
#69. What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.
Nina Simone
#70. I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.
Nina Simone
#71. I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I've dreamed.
Nina Simone
#72. Birds flying high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world
For me
And I'm feeling good
I'm feeling good
Nina Simone
#73. I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping.
Nina Simone
#74. You've got to learn to leave the table
When love's no longer being served.
Nina Simone
#75. Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.
Nina Simone
#76. I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about ... Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.
Nina Simone
#78. You don't have to live next to me / Just give me my equality.
Nina Simone
#79. 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.
Nina Simone
#80. I'm sorry that I did not become the world's first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.
Nina Simone
#81. The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.
Nina Simone
#82. Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
Nina Simone
#83. I applied for a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I knew I was good enough, but they turned me down. And it took me about six months to realize it was because I was black. I never really got over that jolt of racism at the time.
Nina Simone
#84. I look forward to doing my own show, not someone else's. That's always been my dream.
Nina Simone
#85. It's a good time for black people to be alive.
Nina Simone
#86. It's a new dawn, it's a new day ... and I'm feeling good.
Nina Simone
#87. It is an artist's duty to reflect the times.
Nina Simone
#88. 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.
Nina Simone
#89. 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.
Nina Simone
#90. 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.
Nina Simone
#91. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it?
Nina Simone
#92. Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
Nina Simone
#93. Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.
Nina Simone
#94. I don't like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.
Nina Simone
#95. That is why we fly from the inner void, since God might steal into it. It is not the pursuit of pleasure and the aversion for effort which causes sin, but fear of God. We know that we cannot see him face to face without dying, and we do not want to die.
Nina Simone
#96. Because Nina's Simone music is incredibly honest. That's like saying, "Why does Jesus' word still stay around?" It's incredibly honest and it's good.
Nikki Giovanni
#97. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?
Nina Simone
#98. I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.
Nina Simone
#99. I try to swim every damn day I can, and I've learned to scuba dive and snorkel.
Nina Simone
#100. How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it
Nina Simone
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
