Nina Simone Quotes

My live performance, it just comes from feeling an energy and emotion from the crowd. Just going out there and doing my own stuff and being in front of my own people. I love it.

Starting in music, where I get a chance to connect with the lyrics of a song, I learned so much about performing on stage and connecting to your audience and to what you're singing about. Singing is very emotional. Every song has its own purpose.

I find a similarity between performing music onstage and acting - a reality of emotion.

When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy.

When I go onstage, I'm going to work ...I feel like my performance is about an emotional connection. I want to connect with people, whether it's like a romantic song or a happy song.

I love the feeling of letting fly, of pushing as far as I could go with my voice. The only way you can really graduate how you do it is by doing it regularly to people who don't have to be super impressed. You can do it in the studio all day long but you don't get the flashback that you get onstage.

Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

My songs are a direct route into my brain and my heart.

Music for me has always been something that is directly connected to my heart.

I've always just had sort of a dark take on life, I suppose, and hopefully, the music transcends that in a way.

I think it's really cool to embrace the pain of something that may have hurt you and be able to express it through music.

When I sing, I always relive a part of my life.

For me, music is so passionate, I have to give it my all every time I go onstage. Onstage, it was always comfortable for me, because that's where I felt at home.

I'm actually not an exhibitionist at all. When you get onstage and you get under the lights playing music, I feel more hidden and more alone than anywhere else. You hide behind your music and let your emotions come out through the music.

Music is something that should speak for itself, straight from the heart. It took me a long time to understand that.

Music is a very personal and emotional form of communication.

I just love music, and I love what music does for people.

My guitar and singing was my way of crying.

Every time I go out on a stage I consider myself very lucky. Because, in a time where people are economically thinking about what to go and see - so, when I am on a stage, and it doesn't matter where I am, that's my favorite show. I come home after and say "That was my favorite show".

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do. It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head].

Music gets us in touch with our emotions in a way that's more intimate than any other art form.

As a teenager I started painting and playing guitar...Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel...This song ("Until It's Time for You To Go") popped into my head while I was falling in love with someone I knew couldn't stay with me. The words are about honesty and freedom inside the heart.

Performing live is like harvesting your crops and sharing your food with people.

Music is the universal language ... it brings people closer together.

I paint my joy and I sing my sorrow.