Top 100 Paul Simon Quotes
#1. And a rock feels no pain; And an island never cries.
Paul Simon
#2. Much of songwriting is simply a mystery.
Paul Simon
#3. When I was 15, I made a solo record. It made Artie very unhappy. He looked upon it as something of a betrayal.
Paul Simon
#4. The degree of customization possible through your Preferences screens is awesome.
Paul Simon
#5. Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes
Paul Simon
#6. I sort of recognize it, as opposed to shaping it. Oh, that's a good idea, that's a good line. I wonder where I can use that. And when you get into a rhyme group like 'not,' you got a lot of rhymes, you got a lot of choices. The more you do it, the luckier you get.
Paul Simon
#7. I have my books
And 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.
Paul Simon
#8. 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
Paul Simon
#9. The record company stay out of my way. Whenever the record is finished, they take it.
Paul Simon
#10. 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.
Paul Simon
#11. Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.
Paul Simon
#12. Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?
Paul Simon
#13. It's a big error to think that because you like somebody's work, you're going to like him.
Paul Simon
#14. Without Arthur's voice, I never would have enjoyed that success.
Paul Simon
#15. Lord, I am a surgeon and music is my knife. It cuts away my sorrow and purifies my life.
Paul Simon
#16. We were always able to sing and blend well together; that's our gift. But aside from that, we're really two different guys.
Paul Simon
#17. 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.
Paul Simon
#18. These are the days of lasers in the jungle, staccato signals of constant information ...
Paul Simon
#19. I've got a reason to believe we all be received in Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee.
Paul Simon
#21. I don't think that Simon and Garfunkel as a live act compares to Simon and Garfunkel as a studio act.
Paul Simon
#22. When I began making my own albums, the songs became funkier. They were more about the streets.
Paul Simon
#23. I want to rid my heart of envy, and cleanse my soul of rage before I'm through.
Paul Simon
#24. I get the news I need on the weather report
And I have nothing to do today but smile
Paul Simon
#25. 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.
Paul Simon
#26. I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers, still crazy after all these years.
Paul Simon
#27. And she said 'Losing love is like a window in your heart,
Everybody sees you're blown apart,
Everybody feels the wind blow.'
Paul Simon
#28. 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.
Paul Simon
#29. They've got a wall in China, it's a thousand miles long. To keep out the foreigners, they made it strong. And I've got a wall around me, you can't even see.
Paul Simon
#30. 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.
Paul Simon
#31. 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.
Paul Simon
#32. 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.
Paul Simon
#33. People talking without speaking,/ People listening without hearing ... Sounds of Silence.
Paul Simon
#34. Faith is an island in the setting sun, But proof is the bottom line for everyone.
Paul Simon
#35. The Wisdom is old, the Koran is old, the Bible is old. Disagreements? Work 'em out.
Paul Simon
#36. 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.
Paul Simon
#37. You know, life is what you make of it- so beautiful or so what.
Paul Simon
#38. Far above the golden clouds, the darkness vibrates.
The earth is blue.
And everything about it is a love song. Everything about it.
Paul Simon
#39. I've got nothing to do today but smile.
Paul Simon
#40. 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.
Paul Simon
#41. 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.
Paul Simon
#42. 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.
Paul Simon
#44. 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.
Paul Simon
#45. I regret the ending of our friendship and hope one day before we die, we'll make peace with each other ... No rush.
Paul Simon
#46. Music is sometimes the only benign avenue of communication between antagonists.
Paul Simon
#47. 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.
Paul Simon
#48. I stepped outside to smoke a J and when I came back to the room, everybody just seemed to move.
Paul Simon
#49. Breakdowns come, and breakdowns go.
Paul Simon
#50. 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 ...
Paul Simon
#51. The trick is, as I know it, is to care like hell
and not give a damn at the same time.
Paul Simon
#52. One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
Paul Simon
#53. Take me. I'm an ordinary player in the key of C.
And my will was broken by my pride and my vanity.
Who's gonna love you when you're looks are gone?
God will. Like he waters the flowers on your window sill.
Paul Simon
#54. 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.
Paul Simon
#55. A fundamental requirement, overriding any other for this job, is an understanding of deafness-what it is and how it affects the educational experience.
Paul Simon
#56. 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?"
Paul Simon
#57. Elvis was the reason I picked up the guitar.
Paul Simon
#58. I like them all ... They're all pictures of me when I wrote them ... I have no favorite songs.
Paul Simon
#59. So I'll continue to continue to pretend my life will never end, and flowers never bend with the rainfall.
Paul Simon
#60. In the clearing stands the boxer, and a fighter by his trade.
And he carries a reminder of every glove that laid him down ...
or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame
"I am leaving! I am leaving" but the fighter still remains.
Paul Simon
#61. She said a good day ain't got no rain
She said a bad day is when I lie in the bed
And I think of things that might have been
Paul Simon
#62. It was easier than explaining DiMaggio's use as a metaphor.
Paul Simon
#63. 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 ...
Paul Simon
#64. Maybe I think too much for my own good.
Paul Simon
#65. 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.
Paul Simon
#66. 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.
Paul Simon
#67. The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.
Paul Simon
#68. There must be 50 ways to leave your lover.
Paul Simon
#69. Facts can be turned into art if one is artful enough.
Paul Simon
#70. The only time that love is an easy game is when two other people are playing it.
Paul Simon
#71. 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.
Paul Simon
#72. You have underestimated my power, as you will shortly discover.
Paul Simon
#73. 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.
Paul Simon
#75. The abstract music is just more interesting because it doesn't really have anything to say, but if it is good, it creates thoughts and feelings, and I enjoy that. For me, once the music creates those thoughts and feelings, I begin to write a song about it.
Paul Simon
#76. When I was a young reporter, the great vice among journalists was whiskey. Today, it's cynicism.
Paul Simon
#77. I think I have a superior brain and an inferior stature, if you really want to get brutal about it.
Paul Simon
#78. Love is an island in the setting sun
Paul Simon
#79. It's very helpful to start with something that's true. If you start with something that's false, you're always covering your tracks. Something simple and true, that has a lot of possibilities, is a nice way to begin.
Paul Simon
#80. The dialogue between what's going on in the world and what's going on internally seems to be a natural thing - well, it's natural to me, anyway, to have these thoughts.
Paul Simon
#81. 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?
Paul Simon
#82. My whole artistic life has always been about change, change, change, move on, move on. It's the only thing I find interesting.
Paul Simon
#83. 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.
Paul Simon
#84. Two times two is twenty-two, four times four is forty-four. When numbers get serious, they leave a mark on your door.
Paul Simon
#85. And all the people said 'What a shame that he's dead, but wasn't he a most peculiar man?
Paul Simon
#86. She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said 'Be careful his bowtie is really a camera'
Paul Simon
#87. I always get very calm with baseball.
Paul Simon
#88. We work our jobs, collect our pay, believe were gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip sliding away.
Paul Simon
#89. I don't believe what the papers are saying They're just out to capture my dime, Exaggerating this, exaggerating that.
Paul Simon
#90. It's outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor; It's outrageous, the crimes some human beings must endure ...
Paul Simon
#91. The course of a lifetime runs/over and over again
Paul Simon
#92. As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.
Paul Simon
#93. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Paul Simon
#94. I have my books and poetry to protect me
Paul Simon
#95. Justice Stevens is one of those who are most sensitive to the least powerful in our society.
Paul Simon
#96. Was a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. Not a negative word was heard.
Paul Simon
#97. I met my old lover on the street last night, she seemed glad to see me.
Paul Simon
#98. It's actually very difficult to make something both simple and good.
Paul Simon
#99. 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.
Paul Simon
#100. 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.
Paul Simon
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