Paul Simon Quotes

Time, time, time, see what's become of me,
While I looked around for my possibilities,
I was so hard to please,
But look around, the leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.

Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces,
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy,
I said, 'Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera.'

Because you cannot walk with the holy,
If you're just a halfway decent man.
But I don't pretend that I'm a mastermind
With a genius marketing plan. I'm trying to tap into some wisdom,
Even a little drop would do.
I want to rid my heart of envy
And cleanse my soul of rage
Before I'm through.

"The universe loves a drama," you know. And ladies and gentlemen this is the show.

They say all roads lead to a river
Then one day the river comes up to your door
How will the builder of bridges deliver us all
To the faraway shore?

No I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away, Oh, little darling of mine
I can't for the life of me
Remember a sadder day
I know they say let it be
But it just don't work out that way...

How can you live in the Northeast?
How can you live in the South?
How can you build on the banks of a river
When the flood water pours from the mouth? How can you be a Christian?
How can you be a Jew?
How can you be a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu? How can you?

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 looks around around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen and Hallelujah.

I'm sitting in the railway station.
Got a ticket to my destination.
On a tour of one-night stands my suitcase and guitar in hand.
And ev'ry stop is neatly planned for a poet and a one-man band.

If the answer is infinite light,
Why do we sleep in the dark?

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.

And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
Whoa, whoa, whoa
God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson,
Heaven holds a place for those who pray.
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey.

And what is the point of this story?
What information pertains?
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.

[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.

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.