Carly Simon

There are a few things that were just sheer, unadulterated joy, like the birth of my children.

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

I always live in some kind of anticipation of something good happening.

There was a lot of charm in just living in a big family compound of a house. My two uncles, who were into jazz, lived in the basement, and one of them, Uncle Peter, taught me my first songs on the ukulele.

Music gave me the energy to revise, revive myself; renew, rebirth myself. It was a palliative, a relief.

Fear came in so much in my life that it did everything but completely stop me.

[On religion:] Wasn’t it invented by man for a kind of solace? It’s as though he had said, ‘I’ll make me a nice comfortable garment to shut out the heat and the cold,’ and then it ends by becoming a strait-jacket.

It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.

The Christian ethic played an essential part in my upbringing.

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

Zazen is an activity that is an extension of the universe. Zazen is not the life of an individual, it’s the universe that’s breathing.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

Don’t rush anything. When the time is right, it’ll happen.

Only a spiritual being has awareness.

I’m a bit superstitious about certain things, like what shoes to wear. If I wear the wrong shoes, the whole day may go wrong. Or if I don’t get to the bottom of the stairs before the door closes – stupid little things like that. Then I also have all the normal ones, like don’t walking under ladders and so on.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

Don’t worry that you won’t attain oneness. Work on it!

I would like to believe there is a God, but I think it is better to say I’m not sure there is a God and live your life with kindness and respect for people than to say I know there is a God and then do bad things,

If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.

Do not worship me, I am not God. I’m only a man. I worship Jesus Christ.

Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.