Carly Simon

When I’m feeling anxious or depressed, I do find it helps to reach for a pen and paper. There is something about writing things down, that hand-eye combination, that makes me feel calmer.

Seeing things that are bothering you written down takes away their power. It gives you a perspective. Helps you contain them.

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

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

There ain’t no freedom when you’ve got a worrying mind.

I’ve sworn never to read any reviews ever again except those that are pointed out to me as nice ones. I would say that most of us who are considered in the artist realm just take it so terribly, and, you know, it can kill ya!

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

Never judge a book by its movie.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it. – Vronksy (Anna Karenina)

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

The last book I read was the book I’ve been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

I love books.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.