Best 172 quotes of Paul Simon on MyQuotes

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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 like fashion. It's very heartless.

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

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 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.

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.