Carly Simon Quotes

• "A really strong woman accepts the war she went through and is ennobled by her scars."
• "As a singer I tried on all these hats, these voices, these clothes, and eventually out came me."
• "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."
• "Both my uncles were jazz critics."
• "But in general, my songs are not as singable as the great songwriters of the '30s and '40s, mainly because I write for myself and therefore take more chances."
• "But there's always a creative side to me; even when it's quiet musically, it comes out in some other direction, like painting or decorating or planting a garden or writing a children's book or putting on make-up like a Kabuki artist."
• "But when we listened to the radio, it was Bill Haley and the Comets or the Everly Brothers."
• "Certainly Bob Dylan paved the way, and the Beatles, but there weren't that many people in the '60s who were primarily singer-songwriters."
• "Do you know how many concerts I've done in my whole life, in more than 35 years of performing? Sixty-four."
• "I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing."
• "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."
• "I had a mastectomy in 1998, and then chemo."
• "I had this terrible stammer, so I couldn't really speak properly until I was 16 or 17."
• "I just want to show off my scar proudly and not be afraid of it."
• "I listened to all these Odetta records. She was my favorite singer. She wasn't a very good writer, but she was my favorite voice; so that was the first person I sounded like."
• "I put together one ADAT and a mixer and a reverb unit and a drum machine and a keyboard. And I started writing on that, and that's really how it was done. I did everything on that."
• "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 think that I've got some pretty bad reviews on albums or songs that later proved themselves."
• "I think that most people really know if it's a really great album."
• "I took it to heart that in order to be a good person, you never said anything mean about anybody."
• "I try to get to those peculiar and particular things that you never think of to say."
• "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."
• "I'm Jewish, black, Cuban, and French."
• "I'm still more comfortable with standards than with my own songs."
• "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."
• "In other words, I built on what I had."
• "In part because disc jockeys were allowed to play what they wanted to. There weren't regimented playlists - what they played was all based on their tastes."
• "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 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."
• "My mother's mother was black."
• "My scar is beautiful. It looks like an arrow."
• "No, because I was always nervous about being onstage."
• "No, because I've never really changed my style that much."
• "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."
• "So I suppose this slightly mature fashion sense happened because of what I had."
• "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."
• "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."
• "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."
• "There was a French singer, Francoise Hardy - I used to look at her pictures and try to dress like her."
• "We are in this period now where we all are trying to be in shape physically and deny ourselves any pleasure."
• "We need role models who are going to break the mold."
• "We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big."
• "Well, I make every song I sing personal. I've never chosen a song that wasn't."
• "Well, I tried to get a record deal in 1966 or '67, and everyone thought I was too eclectic."
• "Whereas Billie Holiday is the perfect interpretive singer, and more of a jazz singer, I wanted to do what Frank Sinatra did, in revering and tipping my hat to the actual tune, the way it was written on the sheet music."
• "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."
• "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 know, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 I realized I had spent too long arranging my attitude."
• "You usually can't tell what's inspiring until you look back on it."
• "You're lucky you had that when you were 20. I sure didn't. I was overweight, and I had acne."