Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I look forward to doing my own show, not someone else's. That's always been my dream.
When I choose material for an album all these songs I grew up with pour into my head.
You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.
I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping.
There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.
I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I've dreamed.
I don't like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.
I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.
Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I'm singing her music or not.
Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.
I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I'm not going.
I'm sorry that I did not become the world's first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.
Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I'm lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.
My daughter is in more competition with me. I never wanted to be bigger than my mother or to challenge her.
I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they're not alone.
To me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world. Black people. And I mean that in every sense.
I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I've done my whole life, without thought.
I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.
Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.
I believe in racial memory too. I'm sure I've got ancient African blood in me that has something to do with what I am.
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 demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.
I wasn't a jazz player, but a classical musician, and I improvised arrangements of popular songs using classical motifs.
What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.
If I want to take a particular form of blues somewhere else I have the equipment to do it but I never even thought of it.
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.
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.
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.
My singing, if you want to call it that is merely another medium of expression. Just an instrument I play. That's how I see my voice.
The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.
We have ordered things so long in a certain way, we are numb. Nobody dares question it. This is what is wrong, symbolically, with America.
It doesn't matter to me what is going on today because my music encompasses every kind of mood that exists in human beings. That's my stick.
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.
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.
At this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don't think you can help but be involved.
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.
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.
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
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.
It's logical that people from bad times will reflect their feelings in their communication. Music is part of the communication. If you lived it, you can do it.
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 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.
I think the rich will eventually have to cave in too, because the economic situation around the world is not gonna tolerate the United States being on top forever.
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.
Through music you can become sad, joyful, loving, you can learn. You can learn mathematics, touch, pacing... Oh my God! Ooh... Wow... You can see colors through music. Anything!
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.
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.
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.
By the time I was eight I was taking classical piano lessons and I wanted to be a concert pianist. But that didn't work out. I graduated from high school and my formal education ended.