Carly Simon Quotations

A really strong woman accepts the war she went through and is ennobled by her scars.

I took it to heart that in order to be a good person; you never said anything mean about anybody.

As a singer I tried on all these hats, these voices, these clothes, and eventually out came me.

I always think it's interesting to dig a little bit deeper every time you go to someplace that seems like a revelation or a strong connection to an emotional truth.

We need role models who are going to break the mold.

I had this terrible stammer, so I couldn't really speak properly until I was 16 or 17.

You know, people want to honor me, and on the one hand I just don't want to be a poster child; but on the other, I want to do something classy and great - something where the residuals will go to the cause.

You usually can't tell what's inspiring until you look back on it.

It didn't matter as much because I'm a singer, not an actress, but my face is more acceptable in a way now than when I first came on the scene, because I'm part black.

My scar is beautiful. It looks like an arrow.

I just want to show off my scar proudly and not be afraid of it.

Do you know how many concerts I've done in my whole life, in more than 35 years of performing? Sixty-four.

We are in this period now where we all are trying to be in shape physically and deny ourselves any pleasure.

You're lucky you had that when you were 20. I sure didn't. I was overweight, and I had acne.

I've gone through the village of my songwriting and my artistry, and I've gone through lots of different phases, including one where it has been very quiet and abandoned me for a few years.

You know when you take the paint off an old canvas and you discover that something's been painted underneath it? That's what I feel like - that part of the old is coming through the new.

I think that I've got some pretty bad reviews on albums or songs that later proved themselves.

I remember being onstage once when I didn't have fear: I got so scared I didn't have fear that it brought on an anxiety attack.

I had a mastectomy in 1998, and then chemo.

I think that most people really know if it's a really great album.

I'm still more comfortable with standards than with my own songs.

Well, I make every song I sing personal. I've never chosen a song that wasn't.

Being in this business for as long as I've been in it, it's sort of like living in a town or a city before the war and then after the war and then during the reconstruction and then during the time that it sprawls out to the malls.

One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.

There was a French singer, Francoise Hardy - I used to look at her pictures and try to dress like her.

My father was a classical pianist, and my mother was a singer of just about everything.

My look was even more solidified when I started singing in Greenwich Village with my sister Lucy. We wore matching dresses as the Simon Sisters.

But when we listened to the radio, it was Bill Haley and the Comets or the Everly Brothers.

I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing.

I try to get to those peculiar and particular things that you never think of to say.

No, because I was always nervous about being onstage.

No, because I've never really changed my style that much.

So I suppose this slightly mature fashion sense happened because of what I had.

Sometimes, but the year I lived in France I started to write songs.

The models for me were more the folk-rock singers of the '60s and '70s.

Then I went through a big Peggy Lee stage, then I became Annie Ross, then Judy Collins.

We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big.

Well, I tried to get a record deal in 1966 or '67, and everyone thought I was too eclectic.

Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music...I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing.

possibly one of the best in the world. The Americans have a slightly different handicap system, so it's difficult to tell. But what she's done so far is phenomenal.

I feel that if John Wilkes Booth hadn't shot Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln would have come through his pain and emerged like Livingston has. This album was made with the wisdom that comes from allowing yourself to be recklessly entwined with your agony and sorrow.

The punishment doesn't fit the crime. I've done everything I can to get him out, or at least get him a fairer trial.

In other words, I built on what I had.

It's like The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat, about the discovery of penicillin. Out of these strange accidents come huge discoveries. A certain purple bleeds into red and all of a sudden you have something unexpected.

But I'm lost when it comes to you.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

You're so vain. I bet you think this song is about you.

I've learned that nobody's perfect, and I don't expect myself to be perfect anymore.

The advancements that women have made are very threatening to men in the job place. There haven't been that many women in politics. If you look at the conventions, it's kind of pathetic how many men are the heads of companies. On the other hand, I'm not sure what the reality should be.

Undoubtedly, Patsy Cline was a trailblazer and in that respect, all women who are singular in a man's field have a special power.

You know, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 I realized I had spent too long arranging my attitude.

I grew up not understanding what was true and what was not true. It gave me a sense of unreality. I was told that this man [mom's lover] was not my mother's lover - when he was. I was told he was there as a male babysitter for my brother so that he would learn sports and other manly things.

So many artists who came out during that time, including myself, were able to get on radio. New forms of singer-songwriters developed out of that.

All men are created equal and all women are created equal as well, but [equality] seems much clearer when it comes to race issues. In the realms of man/woman, man/man, woman/woman love, it seems all up for grabs now. We are exploring so much, but I think we gotta go for the fight for all equality first.

I'm a little old-fashioned - I like it when the man opens the door and I like it when a man pays for me. I particularly like it when they pay for dinner or whatever, because I've pretty much done the opposite, but for the exception of James [Taylor], where we split everything down the middle. I've been the larger money earner in practically all of my relationships. There's equality and there are positive differences, which are complimentary.

I haven't got time for the pain.

I used the physical scar of my breast cancer operation, the scar that I have across my chest as a metaphor for all kinds of scars.

Anticipation is making me late, it's keeping me waiting.

Life is a dream even in its most painful moments, it's a dream that we can dance to.

We change our opinions of ourselves so often. What the outside world thinks is only a small part of our image.

I've always thought of myself as being a warrior. When you actually have a battle, it's better than when you don't know who to fight.

You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds, but soon you'll cage me on your shelf. I'll never learn to be just me, first by myself.

Worrying too much about other people's ears and not my own, I lost my way.

The sound of birds stops the noise in my mind.

You don't have to prove to me you're beautiful to strangers, I've got loving eyes of my own..

Don't mind if I fall apart. There's more room in a broken heart.

Everyone has problems, and learning to share them is essential. Hiding pain requires an enormous amount of energy; sharing it is liberating.

I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee.