Nina Simone Quotes

Cause your mama's name was lonely, and your daddy's name was pain. And they called you little sorrow, cus you'll never love again. You ain't got no one to hold you. You ain't got no one to care. if you'd only understand it. nobody wants you anywhere.

I have to constantly re-identify myself to myself, reactivate my own standards, my own convictions about what I'm doing and why.

Hound dogs on my trail/School children sitting in jail/Black cat cross my path/I think every day's gonna be my last/Don't tell me, I'll tell you/Me and my people just about due/I've been there so I know/They keep on saying "Go slow!"

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

"To Love Somebody"

There' a light
A certain kind of light
It's never shown on me
I want my whole life to be
Lived with you
Lived with you

There's a way
Everybody say
Do each and every little thing
What good does it bring
If I ain't got you If I ain't got you
If I ain't got you If I ain't got you

You don't know
What it's like
Baby you don't know
What it's like
To love somebody
To love somebody
The way I love you

In my brain
See your face again
I know my frame of mind
You ain't got to be so blind
And I'm blind so blind

But I'm a woman
Can't you see what I am
I live and breathe for you
What good does it do
If I ain't got you If I ain't got you
If I ain't got you If I ain't got you

Say you don't know
What it's like
Baby you don't know what it's like
To love somebody
To love somebody
The way I love you

Oh'a, you don't know
What it's like
Baby you don't know
What it's like
To love somebody
To love somebody
The way I love you

Because of 'Porgy' people often compared me to Billie Holiday, which I hated. That was just one song out of my repertoire, and anybody who saw me perform could see we were entirely different. What made me mad was that it meant people couldn't get past the fact we were both black: if I had happened to be white nobody would have made the connection. And I didn't like to be put in a box with other jazz singers because my musicianship was totally different, and in its own way superior. Calling me a jazz singer was a way of ignoring my musical background because I didn't fit into white ideas of what a black performer should be. It was a racist thing; 'If she's black she must be a jazz singer.' It diminished me, exactly like Langston Hughes was diminished when people called him a 'great black poet'. Langston was a great poet period, and it was up to him and him alone to say what part the colour of his skin had to do with that.

the world is big/Big and bright and round/And it's full of folks like me/Who are black, yellow, beige and brown

I wish I could share all the love that's in my heart/Remove all the bars that keep us apart/I wish you could know what it means to be me/Then you'd see and agree/That everyone should be free/But, oh, I'm just a soul whose intentions are good/Oh, Lord, please, don't let me be misunderstood

Having as little to do with human beings as possible - in some weird way, I'm at peace.

Don'tcha know that no one alive can always be an angel?
When everything goes wrong, you see some bad
But oh, I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

We never talked about men or clothes or inconsequential things we got together. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution - real girls' talk.

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.

I came to expect despair every time I set foot in my own country, and I was never disappointed.

"Wild Is The Wind"

Love me, love me, love me, say you do
Let me fly away with you
For my love is like the wind
And wild is the wind

Give me more than one caress
Satisfy this hungriness
Let the wind blow through your heart
For wild is the wind

You touch me
I hear the sound of mandolins
You kiss me
With your kiss my life begins
You're spring to me
All things to me

Don't you know you're life itself
Like a leaf clings to a tree
Oh my darling, cling to me
For we're creatures of the wind
And wild is the wind
So wild is the wind

You touch me
I hear the sound of mandolins
You kiss me
With your kiss my life begins
Dady, you're spring to me
All things to me

Don't you know you're life itself
Like a leaf clings to a tree
Oh my darling, cling to me
For we're creatures of the wind
And wild is the wind
So wild is the wind

Wild is the wind
Wild is the wind
Wild is the wind

Right now I'm as close to happy as I can be without a husband to love, I started to work on this book, looking back over a life which, after thinking about for months and months, I have no regrets about. Plenty of mistakes, some bad days, and, most resonant of all, years of joy - hard, but joyous all the same - fighting for the rights of my brothers and sisters everywhere; America, Africa, all over the world, years where pleasure and pain were mixed together. I knew then, and I still do, that the happiness I felt, and still feel, as we moved forward together was of a kind that very few people ever experience. But what I like most of all about the way things are now is that I have enough financial security to know that I can't be pushed into doing anything I don't want to. When I release a new album or video it'll be because I'm proud and want to share it - no other reason. (p 175)