Nina Simone

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking… The new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

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

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

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

You’re just as beautiful as you feel.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

I guess you can look at me, and tell I’m the old man. My name is BB King.

That’s the thing about jazz: it’s free flowing, it comes from your soul.

I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.

I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it.

Being a musician is what I do, but it’s not what I am.

Jazz music is a special skill that has brought pleasure to millions throughout the world.

Jazz can only enhance the Classical side and Classical can only enhance the Jazz side.

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

Miles Davis and John Coltrane were so cool, if alive today global warming wouldn’t be an issue.

A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night, but differently each time.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

How are you going to know what’s new to play if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?