Quotes By Paul Simon

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'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.

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

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.

Listen to the sound of silence.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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