Paul Simon Quotes

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

I’ve built walls, A fortress deep and mighty, That none may penetrate. I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain. It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.

A winter's day
In a deep and dark
December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said "The words of the prophets Are written on the subway walls And tenement halls And whispered in the sound of silence"

"Fools," said I, "you do not know Silence like a cancer grows Hear my words that I might teach you Take my arms that I might reach you" But my words like silent raindrops fell And echoed in the wells of silence.

And in the naked light I saw Ten thousand people maybe more People talking without speaking People hearing without listening People writing songs that voices never shared No one dared Disturb the sound of silence.

Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains Within the sound of silence.

God only knows
God makes his plan
The information's unavailable
To the mortal man.
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway
When in fact we're slip slidin' away.

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away.
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away.

This is near enough true bliss.

[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.

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.

I am editing myself as we go along

Well its great to do a neighborhood concert. I hope everyone can hear us. I hope that the sound is good. I hope we are blasting Central Park West and Fifth avenue pretty much away. I just want to thank the police department and the fire department and the parks commissioner, and Ed Koch [Audience boos] — and particularly, you know, people that never get recognized for doing good things for the city, a group of people that have donated half of the proceeds that they're making tonight — the guys who are selling loose joints are giving the city half of their income tonight.