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Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage. My mother is an Evangelist and I used to play the piano at her revival meetings.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
Many times I feel different like a different person.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon
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I have a cultured manner of speaking.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
I made wine from the lilac tree/Put my heart in its recipe/It makes me see what I want to see/And be what I want to be.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
I love the classics but there are many new ideas to be made into reality. I'd rather be concerned with my own thing. There are many masters of classical piano so I'll leave it to them.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
As I got older though I wanted a life of my own. The classical training was very demanding and thorough. It was a very sheltered existence. Even though I heard blues and gospel on the radio sometimes, it was always back to the piano and study and give recitals.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
I'm a nut for Bach as a composer.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon
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I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
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.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
By the time I was eight I was taking classical piano lessons and I wanted to be a concert pianist. But that didn't work out. I graduated from high school and my formal education ended.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
Desegregation is a joke.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
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.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon
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My people have very subtle slang, inflections and ways of saying things that has little to do with words. If you're from the same place, you'll feel the jargon and know exactly what's happening. Same with any neighborhood cat. What he sees and hears and feels and lives makes him what he is. That's what blues is.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
Music is an art and art has its own rules. And one of them is that you must pay more attention to it than anything else in the world, if you are going to be true to yourself. And if you don't do it - and you are an artist - it punishes you.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
I was reared in the church from the age of three. I've played piano since I was three. I performed at revivals and for my people around North Carolina for several years. People around town collected money to send me to school.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I'm lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon
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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.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
I applied for a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I knew I was good enough, but they turned me down. And it took me about six months to realize it was because I was black. I never really got over that jolt of racism at the time.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
The worst thing about that kind of prejudice... is that while you feel hurt and angry and all the rest of it, it feeds you self-doubt. You start thinking, perhaps I am not good enough.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon -
I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don't think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon