Top 203 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Simon - Page 3

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.

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.

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!

Jay Ashby is simply a great musician!

The death penalty is reserved for people who do not

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.

It was easier than explaining DiMaggio's use as a metaphor.

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

I think my hight had the most significant single effect on my existence, aside from my brain. In fact, it's part of an inferior-superior syndrome. I think I have an inferior brain and an inferior stature, if you really want to get brutal about it.

...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.

To get the stuff out of you, especially if what you're dealing with is yourself, requires you to open up and touch tender spots. You have to be anesthetized a little bit.

Serious numbers will speak to us always.

I didn't get how big it was until I went home, turned on the television and saw it on all the news, and later that night on the front pages of all the newspapers. Then I got it.

How can you live in the Northeast?

The problem is all inside your head, she said to me The answer is easy if you take it logically I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.

There is a moment, a chip in time, when leaving home is the lesser crime.

The risk of failure is part of the fun of what I do.

It's outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor; It's outrageous, the crimes some human beings must endure.

I really don't know what exactly all the songs mean. Sometimes other people have meanings and when I hear them I think, 'That's really a better meaning than I thought, and perfectly valid, given the words that exist.' So part of what makes a song really good is that people take in different meanings, and they apply them, and they might be more powerful than the ones I'm thinking.

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.

You sit and you let your fingers go to wherever they are going to go. You wait until you start to hear something, and you start to figure out what it is that you're doing. And then you add another piece next to that piece, and wait to see if some kind of pattern or something interesting starts to grow, and then you cultivate it.

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

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

Maybe the heart is part of the mist. And that's all that there is or could ever exist. Maybe and maybe and maybe some more. Maybe's the exit that I'm looking for.

No one dare disturb the sound of silence...

Was a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. Not a negative word was heard.

Elvis was the reason I picked up the guitar.

We're living in a certain time, and we're aware of it. And that's part of what we're aware of, along with our own personal aches and pains.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

...everything looks worse in black and white.

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.

She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy I said 'Be careful his bowtie is really a camera'

The only time that love is an easy game is when two other people are playing it.

The leaves that are green turn to brown. And they wither with the wind. And they crumble in your hand.

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

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

Most of the time, when I had hits as a soloist - maybe not so much with Simon & Garfunkel - I was surprised they were hits. I didn't know what the hits were. I never thought that 'Loves Me Like A Rock' was going to be a hit, or 'Mother And Child Reunion,' or '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.' They didn't sound like what the hits sounded like at the time. Radio was more open to things that weren't exactly what every other hit was.

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

The course of a lifetime runs/over and over again

Time, time, time, see what's become of me, While I looked around, For my possibilities; I was so hard to please

Losing love is like a window in your heart.

Time it was And what a time it was, it was A time of innocence A time of confidences Long ago it must be I have a photograph Preserve your memories They're all that's left you

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.

Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.

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

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.

The Wisdom is old, the Koran is old, the Bible is old. Disagreements? Work 'em out.

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.

The degree of customization possible through your Preferences screens is awesome.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Most of the time, the songs have jokes in them, little sarcastic things, or purposely kitsch or something. So that's going along with a story, like I do in life, just talking to myself and making fun of stuff and laughing at stuff that's serious. And sometimes it's a good idea to put the laughing into the songs. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's all right just to be serious. But most of the songs have some kind of joke in them.

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.

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

I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died. If I never loved I never would have cried...I am a rock.

I'm always going forward toward something, and that something is usually an album, because I like to record. I probably like to record more than I like to write.

Who's gonna love you when your looks are gone?