You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.
What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.
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.
You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.
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.
Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.
There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.
This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.
It’s a good time for black people to be alive.
Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.
I’m just human, I have faults like anyone.
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 feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they’re not alone.
To be young, gifted and black!
Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.
I’m a real rebel with a cause.
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.
I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.