Nina Simone

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.

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

Desegregation is a joke.

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

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

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 flirt all the time. I like men! I don't think we can do without them.

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

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.

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

I think that the artists who don't get involved in preaching messages probably are happier - but you see, I have to live with Nina, and that is very difficult.

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

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

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

What I was interested in was conveying an emotional message, which means using everything you've got inside you sometimes to barely make a note, or if you have to strain to sing, you sing.

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

To me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world. Black people. And I mean that in every sense.

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

I'm a real rebel with a cause.