Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
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.
I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I met my old lover on the street last night. She seemed so glad to see me, I just smiled. Then we talked about some old times and we drank ourselves some beers, still crazy after all these years.
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.
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.
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.
The words come. Usually, it's a long time before they come. And then when they start to come, it doesn't take so long for it to be finished. It takes a long time to begin. And then it sort of gets finished.
Just slip out the back, Jack, make a new plan, Stan, you don't need to be coy, Roy, just get yourself free. Hop on the bus, Gus, you don't need to discuss much, just drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
She said, why don't we both just sleep on it tonight, And I believe, in the morning you'll begin to see the light. And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right, There must be fifty ways to leave your lover, fifty ways to leave your lover.
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.
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'm going to Graceland, for reasons I cannot explain. There's some part of me wants to see Graceland. And I may be advised to defend every love, every ending, or maybe there's no obligations now. Maybe I've a reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland.
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.
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 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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Philip Larkin didn't write for several years before his life ended. And when he was asked why he didn't write, he said the muse deserted him. And when I read that, it really had a profound effect upon me, sort of scared me. So that's why I think I have no right to assume that some thought is going to come... But I think, in my imagination, if it is it, there will probably be something else I'm 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!
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.