Desegregation is a joke.

To be young, gifted and black!

I'm a real rebel with a cause.

Music is the center of my life.

I'm a nut for Bach as a composer.

I'm not a blues singer, I'm a diva.

I have a cultured manner of speaking.

I don't like to go to strange places.

I'm just human, I have faults like anyone

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

I can read and arrange, but I can't write.

I can't stand loud guitars that make me deaf.

It's a good time for black people to be alive.

I know I'm different, but I don't think about it.

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

I love to travel to hear different kinds of music.

How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

My name sounds French but that's just a stage name.

Many times I feel different like a different person.

I don't like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.

When a child is gifted, people try to help that child.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day...and I'm feeling good.

I didn't get interested in music. It was a gift from God.

I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs... and good ones.

It's an artist's duty to reflect the times in which we live.

You don't have to live next to me / Just give me my equality.

It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution - real girl's talk.

Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.

Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.

Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage.

If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.

I'll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear. I mean really, no fear!

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.

Music is a gift and a burden I've had since I can remember who I was.

I flirt all the time. I like men! I don't think we can do without them.

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.

What is love but a prelude to sorrow...with heartache ahead for your goal.

Sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.

You've got to learn to leave the table When love's no longer being served".

When I'm on that stage, I assume honor. I assume compensation, and I should.

Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.

Tomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn't recognize my voice.

From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.

I try to swim every damn day I can, and I've learned to scuba dive and snorkel.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

You get racism crossing the street; it's in the very fabric of American society.

That's a very high goal to have, study eight hours a day to be a concert pianist.

All the time, there was the weight of my community's expectations on my shoulders.

Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.

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

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