Paul Simon Quotes

67 Sourced Quotes

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

Paul Simon
The mother and child reunion is only a motion away.

Paul Simon
It's an act of courage to let go. I am going to see what happens if I let go. Then I'm going to see, who am I? Or am I just this person that was defined by what I did? And if that's gone, if you have to make up yourself, who are you?

Paul Simon
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
I have gone through different phases in my music writing. There was a time when I used a little exercise — incorporating all of the twelve notes in the chromatic scale — to get me going. I used this technique for a while, but I don't any longer because I am going back to simpler melodies. Originally I moved away from the simple songs because I thought they were too simple.

Paul Simon
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
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
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening…
'Fools,' said I, 'You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.'

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

Paul Simon
I didn't want to repeat the same notes in the second verse that I used in the first, so I wrote out all the notes of the song and all the notes that were missing in the scale, given that there are twelve notes from octave to octave. All those notes that weren't in the scale were the ones I wanted in for the next verse. The listener isn't aware that they are new notes, but the sound is pleasing to the ear. I change the key, and somehow it's fresh because you haven't heard those notes before.

Paul Simon
I've seen fame turn into absolute poison when I was a kid in the '60s. It killed Presley. It killed Lennon. It killed Michael Jackson. I've never known anyone to have gotten an enormous amount of fame who wasn't, at a minimum, confused by it and had a very hard time making decisions.

Paul Simon
If you'll be my bodyguard I can be your long lost pal, I can call you Betty and, Betty, when you call me You can call me Al.

Paul Simon
I wanted to sing other types of songs that Simon and Garfunkel wouldn't do. "Mother and Child Reunion" for example, is not a song that you would have normally thought that Simon and Garfunkel would have done. It's possible that they might have. But it wouldn't have been the same, and I don't know if I would have been so inclined in that direction. So for me it was a chance to break out and gamble a little bit … The breakup had to do with a natural drifting apart as we got older and the separate lives that were more individual. We weren't so consumed with recording and performing. We had other activities … there was no great pressure to stay together other than money, which exerted very little influence upon us. … We didn't need the money.

Paul Simon
All of a sudden you're there, and you're surprised. This happened to me at times where some line comes out, where I'm the audience and it's real, and I have to stop, because I'm crying. I didn't know I was going to say that, didn't know that I felt that, didn't know that was really true. I have to stop and catch my breath. It doesn't happen too often.

Paul Simon
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.

Paul Simon
Instead of thinking in terms of chords, I think of voice-leading; that is, melody line and bass line, and where the bass line goes. If you do that, you'll have the right chord. [These voices] will give you some alternatives, and you can play those different alternatives to hear which one suits your ear... Keep the bass line moving so you don't stay in one spot: if you have an interesting bass line and you roll it against the melody, the chords are going to come out right.

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

Paul Simon
[Rock 'n' roll] really is not given to thinking — and resents thinking. Which I believe is the big error of rock 'n' roll. It's always aspired to be the music of the working class. And it's never been looked upon as a vocabulary for art and artistic thinking... We have to be able to expand the vocabulary to express more complex thoughts.

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

Paul Simon
I want to rid my heart of envy, and cleanse my soul of rage before I'm through.

Paul Simon
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!

Paul Simon
And the sign said, 'The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls'
And whispered in the sounds of silence.

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

Paul Simon
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.

Paul Simon
There was always some kind of strain, but it was workable. The bigger you get, the more of a strain it is, because in your everyday life, you're less used to compromising. As you get bigger, you have your own way. But in a partnership you always have to compromise. … When you get into a partnership, you're not the boss. There's no boss. That makes it hard.

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

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

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

Paul Simon
I write from instinct, from inexplicable sparkle. I don't know why I'm writing what I'm writing. Usually, I sit and I let my hands wander on my guitar. And I sing anything. I play anything. And I wait till I come across a pleasing accident. Then I start to develop it. Once you take a piece of musical information, there are certain implications that it automatically contains — the implication of that phrase elongated, contracted, or inverted or in another time signature. So you start with an impulse and go to what your ear likes.

Paul Simon