Nina Simone Quotes

I played piano for a lot of my childhood and stupidly quit. I wish I hadn't - I could have been a great classical pianist!

One of the great regrets of my life is that I don't play piano.

Not many people get that 'happily ever after' they want in life. There are disappointments every step of the way, no matter how hard one strives for the best.

This is a terrible confession to make, but after I left the Army I had a number of things to try. I had a great conceit to think that if all else failed I could always go to Hollywood. So when all else did fail I really went to Hollywood. And then I found out how wrong I was.

It is perfectly possible to get what you think you want and be miserable. It's possible too, to never get it but deeply enjoy the process of trying. In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

I've speculated about what my life might have been like as a musician, but I'm afraid I came to the conclusion that I probably would've either been teaching piano or maybe gotten to play at Nordstrom's department store.

Trust on and think To-morrow will repay; To-morrow's falser than the former day; Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest With some new Joys, cuts off what we possest.

There is sadness of when you're watching someone enjoy something that you think is substandard. The ineffable sadness when someone is happy and something is not as good as it should be.

When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.

How many times have you bought something thinking it would make you happy, and found it does not?

Sometimes we spend our money on something we think is gonna be great, and the titles shall remain nameless, but they're just a little disappointing.

I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending

Do you know how much thinking and feeling I’ve done? It’s terrible. And nothing’s come of it.

You like to live life without regret but that’s what the good Lord intended for me – that’s just the way it was. My goal was to make it in the NFL, I played with a lot of great players in college who went on to have illustrious, incredible careers and in the end it just didn’t happen for me. I failed at that.

I think it is hard to find happiness, as a whole, in anything. The days of tender youth are gone. I think you can be delirious in your youth, but as you get older, things happen.

I was so frustrated with him. "I just want to be enough for you, but I never can be. This can never be enough for you. But this is all you get. You get me, and your family, and this world. This is your life. I'm sorry if it sucks. But you're not going to be the first man on Mars, and you're not going to be an NBA star, and you're not going to hunt Nazis.

I think, for myself, life lied to me.

Hair is gray and the firers are burning. So many dreams on the shelf. You say I wanted you to be proud of me. I always wanted that myself.

When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in error and idleness,... then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift... every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If only youth knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.

The events we most desire do not happen; or, if they do, it is neither in the time nor in the circumstances when they would have given us extreme pleasure.

I'm not sure what I am anymore... Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures... That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.

If I told you God was black, what would you think of that?

I haven't had a very good day. I think I might still be hung over and everyone's dead and my root beer's gone.

It just wasn't the fairy tale I had hoped for.

You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.