Paul Simon quotes:

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  • I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It's chicken and eggs. And I said, I gotta use that one.

  • The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenements halls and whispered in the sounds of silence.

  • I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs.

  • I don't feel any pressure from fans. But I'm always in some kind of state of emotional turmoil. I would not describe myself as happy-go-lucky. That's not to say that I'm not happy.

  • Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.

  • Mrs. Robinson is a little dated now, but it has nothing to do with Joe DiMaggio.

  • If you can get humor and seriousness at the same time, you've created a special little thing, and that's what I'm looking for, because if you get pompous, you lose everything.

  • Kodachrome, it gives us those nice bright colors Gives us the greens of summers Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah! I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph So momma, don't take my Kodachrome away...

  • Listen to the sound of silence.

  • The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.

  • I try to open up my heart as much as I can and keep a real keen eye out that I don't get sentimental. I think we're all afraid to reveal our hearts. It's not at all in fashion.

  • Artie travels all the time. The rehearsals were just miserable. Artie and I fought all the time. He didn't want to do the show with my band; he just wanted me on acoustic guitar.

  • Anybody can do bad work, but not everybody does good work.

  • As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.

  • It's pointless to be critical of your stuff once it's done. I don't spend a lot of time agonising over it. It's of no importance once it's finished.

  • When I was 15, I made a solo record. It made Artie very unhappy. He looked upon it as something of a betrayal.

  • Having a track record to live up to and the history of successes had become a hindrance. It becomes harder to break out of what people expect you to do.

  • We've survived by believing our life is going to get better.

  • I don't consider myself to be a major talent, so the only solace I can take is to hope I'm growing.

  • The record company stay out of my way. Whenever the record is finished, they take it.

  • I think I have a superior brain and an inferior stature, if you really want to get brutal about it.

  • I'm laying out my winter clothes and wishing I was gone, Going home, where the new york city winters aren't bleedin' me.

  • Without Arthur's voice, I never would have enjoyed that success.

  • Who am I to blow against the wind?

  • I would be willing to do almost anything to make Art happy. I care about our friendship. The only thing I won't do is change the essence of my work.

  • I don't very often think I've done a good job. I don't like the majority of what I do. I shouldn't say I don't like it, but I'm not satisfied with almost everything that I do.

  • I'm not in it for the money. I like music. I love to write music. I can't imagine myself not playing or singing or writing. It would just drive me crazy if I didn't.

  • A fundamental requirement, overriding any other for this job, is an understanding of deafness-what it is and how it affects the educational experience.

  • All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

  • Not every song I write is ecstasy. And it can happen only one time. After that, when you sing the same melody and words, it's pleasure, but you don't get wiped out.

  • I don't believe what the papers are saying They're just out to capture my dime, Exaggerating this, exaggerating that.

  • I like them all. ... They're all pictures of me when I wrote them. ... I have no favorite songs.

  • Cecilia was made in a living room on a Sony. It was like a little piece of magical fluff, bur it works. El Condor Pasa a Los Incas record that I love. Bridge is a very strong melodic song.

  • There are lots of really good guitarists, but they play with the same pedals that everybody else does. Everybody buys the same pedals, so the sounds tend to be the same. I am looking for different ways of doing that without having to spend days and weeks and months fooling around with pedals, which I don't enjoy.

  • Sail on silver girl, sail on by...your time has come to shine all your dreams are on their way...see how they shine..oh and if you need a friend. I'm sailing right behind......

  • The students of Gallaudet have sent a powerful message across this country!

  • Life I love you, all is groovy.

  • Just slip out the back, Jack, make a new plan, Stan, you don't need to be coy, Roy, just get yourself free. Hop on the bus, Gus, you don't need to discuss much, just drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free.

  • Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?

  • When I look back at all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all.

  • And so you see I have come to doubt -All that I once held as true ~ I stand alone without beliefs -The only truth I know is you

  • Improvisation is too good to leave to chance.

  • These are the days of lasers in the jungle, staccato signals of constant information...

  • ...what threatens us today in the world of computers and other invasions of privacy is not a national ID card but a number of other things.

  • And she said 'Losing love is like a window in your heart, Everybody sees you're blown apart, Everybody feels the wind blow.'

  • Losing love is like a window in your heart...

  • There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.

  • I met my old lover on the street last night, she seemed glad to see me.

  • Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes

  • You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.

  • So I'll continue to continue to pretend my life will never end, and flowers never bend with the rainfall.

  • And so you see I have come to doubt ~~ All that I once held as true ~~ I stand alone without beliefs ~~ The only truth I know is you

  • Kodachrome... it gives us those nice, bright colors,gives us the greens of summers,makes ya think all the world's a sunny day,Oh yeah!I've got a Nikon camera, I'd love to take a photograph,so mama don't take...my Kodachrome away...

  • I've got nothing to do today but smile.

  • I have my booksAnd my poetry to protect me;I am shielded in my armor,Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.I touch no one and no one touches me.I am a rock,I am an island.

  • People talking without speaking,/ People listening without hearing...Sounds of Silence.

  • Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on.

  • Big box just wasn't our strength. We are a men's and boy's specialty store focused on providing high quality clothing with custom tailoring. Our customer is king. When we had seven stores, communication between the stores and with our customers became more disconnected. We started to lose that great family 'camaraderie' that is essentially the key to our success.

  • Believing I had supernatural powers, I slammed into a brick wall.

  • We got on American Bandstand, where kids would dance to a record and then rate it. We called ourselves Tom and Jerry. I was Jerry.

  • You have underestimated my power, as you will shortly discover.

  • I see a correlation between short stories and songs, because of their length and for what they're meant to evoke. Combine certain words with melodies and it all becomes very moving.

  • People often called us perfectionists, but we were not looking for perfection. We were looking for some kind of magic in the music.

  • Someone told me it's all happening at the zoo.

  • Facts can be turned into art if one is artful enough.

  • When we came into the studio I became more and more me, making the tracks and choosing the musicians, partly because a great deal of the time during Bridge, Artie wasn't there.

  • Artie is a singer, and I'm a writer and player and a singer. We didn't work together on a creative level and prepare the songs. I did that.

  • I question what emotion Manilow touches. People are entertained by him. But are they emotionally moved? I don't believe anything that Barry Manilow sings.

  • Faith is an island in the setting sun, But proof is the bottom line for everyone.

  • My voice is my improvisational instrument, the melody instrument. The guitar is harmonic structure. I'm not a good enough guitarist to improvise on it.

  • We had many more points of agreement than we had points of difference, but we did differ, and the bigger we got, the more insistent we got that each one of us should have his way.

  • One of the things that upset me was some of the criticism leveled at Simon and Garfunkel. I always took exception to it, but actually I agree with a lot of it.

  • We just did what we'd done when we were an act in the '60s. But I found it impossible to hold a dialogue with 500,000 people. In a certain sense, it was numbing.

  • I don't think that Simon and Garfunkel as a live act compares to Simon and Garfunkel as a studio act.

  • I lived in an attached house. My father used to drive into the wrong driveway all the time. He'd say, Damn it, how do you tell one of these houses from another?

  • I don't like fashion. It's very heartless.

  • I suppose an artist takes the elements of his life and rearranges them and then has them perceived by others as though they were the elements of their lives.

  • My whole artistic life has always been about change, change, change, move on, move on. It's the only thing I find interesting.

  • It's a big error to think that because you like somebody's work, you're going to like him.

  • * She said, why don't we both just sleep on it tonight And I believe, in the morning you'll begin to see the light And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right There must be fifty ways to leave your lover, fifty ways to leave your lover Paul Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover First thing I remember when you came into my life I said I wanna get that girl, no matter what I do Well I guess I've been in love before and once or twice have been on the floor But I've never loved no-one the way that I love you.

  • ...everything looks worse in black and white.

  • ...music is sometimes the only benign avenue of communication between antagonists.

  • A lot of talent is a gift, but a lot is also luck. I'm very aware of that. I was born in the right place at the right time. I am also blessed because I've never been a sex symbol. I'm spared the embarrassment of acting young.

  • A man walks down the street. It's a street in a strange world. Maybe it's the third world. Maybe it's his first time around. He doesn't speak the language. He holds no currency. He is a foreign man. He is surrounded by the sound, sound of cattle in the marketplace, scatterlings and orphanages. He looks around, around he sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity and he says, "Amen" and "Hallelujah!

  • A phenomenon occurs but because you're in the middle of it, you just think it's your life-until it's over. And then you look back and say, What an unusual thing happened to me in the '60s.

  • A songwriter's supreme challenge is being complex and simple at the same time

  • After all those years of automatic success, you don't get nervous any more. It's really necessary to be nervous and be a little bit frightened. It pumps the adrenalin into you and you really get down there and try.

  • All God requires from us is to enjoy life and love. That's the whole point.

  • All I've got to do today is smile.

  • Although I was able to study music with teachers, I never studied lyric writing. I read poetry, and I read other lyricists. But they were never writing in the style or the form that I was interested in.

  • And a rock feels no pain; And an island never cries.

  • And I must be what I must be and face tomorrow.

  • And you read your emily dickinson, And I my robert frost. And we note our place with bookmarkers That measure what weve lost.

  • Anthony Heilbut has been a guide and a mentor to me. I know of no one who has the love and depth of knowledge of this extraordinary author.

  • As soon as your mind knows that it's on and it's supposed to produce some lines, either it doesn't or it produces things that are very predictable. And that's why I say I'm not interested in writing something that I thought about. I'm interested in discovering where my mind wants to go, or what object it wants to pick up.

  • Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good.

  • Breakdowns come, and breakdowns go.

  • By the time I was 12 or 13, I felt that I was special, because I could play the guitar and write songs.

  • Couple in the next room bound to win a prize, they've been going at it all night long.

  • Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon grave yard.

  • Elvis was the reason I picked up the guitar.

  • Every time the industry gets powerful, and corporate thinking dominates what the music is, then the music really pales.

  • Far above the golden clouds, the darkness vibrates. The earth is blue. And everything about it is a love song. Everything about it.

  • Given all the facts that I'm young and I'm in good health and I'm famous - that I have talent, I have money - given all these facts, I want to know why I'm so unhappy.

  • How can you live in the Northeast?

  • How much can you do with two voices? You can sing thirds or you can sing fifths or you can do a background harmony.

  • I always get very calm with baseball.

  • I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told, and I have squandered my resistance, for a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises. All lies in jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest...la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lala-la-la-la-la...

  • I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun.

  • I don't really know why an idea comes to me. But all of a sudden, an idea comes and from experience I can intuit what something means when an interesting line pops up. Or I can intuit what an interesting choice might be. And I can try a couple of different choices, and see which one feels right, and then continue the song to see where it goes.

  • I don't really like to write at a desk. I like to write when driving in a car. ... Once you're working on it, you're working on it all the time, and sometimes stuff'll come in the middle of the night, in a dream or something. Your mind is working on it all the time.

  • I don't think [Dylan and the Beatles] influenced me a lot. I think it was inevitable; they were so powerful that you couldn't really escape the influence.

  • I feel I should try to reveal. When you hit it right, you produce an emotional response in the listener that can be cathartic. When you're wrong, you're soppy, sentimental.

  • I get the news I need on the weather report And I have nothing to do today but smile

  • I have my books and my poetry to protect me

  • I just said, you know, this is a great track but this lyric, I don't believe it. It sounds like I'm trying to say something, instead of it naturally coming out of me, like I was saying something that I already knew. Anyway, I can't remember what it was. And either I threw it all out or I threw 90 percent of it out, and kept a line or two. That's happened a couple of times to me. Not too often, but a couple of times. Very aggravating when it does happen.

  • I know a man He came from my home town He wore his passion for his woman Like a thorny crown He said "Dolores I live in fear My love for you's so overpowering I'm afraid that I will disappear

  • I like working with sound; sound and rhythm. I like the abstract more than "What does that mean?" Nobody ever says to you, "Why did you use a harmonium?" Or "What is that ringing sound that occurs here?" The questions are always "What does that song mean?" or "What were you trying to say here?"

  • I met my old lover on the street last night. She seemed so glad to see me, I just smiled. Then we talked about some old times and we drank ourselves some beers, still crazy after all these years.

  • I rate each album as better than the last one. That's how I see it.

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