Mary Chapin Carpenter Quotes

It’s a marvelous feeling when someone says I want to do this song of yours because they’ve connected to it. That’s what I’m after.

I think that every new record is a chance to… I think what it is for me is my heart and soul at that moment in time… I’ve always felt that just being able to make a record is a privilege.

Dreamland is a book, but it’s my song in book form. It’s translated itself into a different medium.

I think on a stage in front of thousands of people is a wildly invigorating and amazing experience, and it requires a certain skill set; then being in the studio, and being curled up in the fetal position under the piano, that requires another skill set.

I kept thinking, I went to college and I have to get a real job.

When I think of the artists I admire and seek out musically. It’s because I’m curious about where they’re going to go the next time they have a chance to put a record out. It’s not about where I find them on the radio dial, or how many records they’re selling.

My sisters and I were fortunate to travel through Asia and Europe at very young ages. We confronted extraordinary beauty in Athens and unspeakable poverty in India.

There’s timing. And then there’s also certain people at the record company who worked incredibly hard and were incredibly enthusiastic about what I was doing.

I was a liberal arts junkie and I figured, well, I’ll go work for somebody somewhere. All I knew was that I was going to have to come home and figure it out.

I don’t think you need to dumb down to a child, you merely have to be clear, you know?

I found Elvis on the Internet, I went camping with a young cadet, he showed me his bayonet.

I like to feel that every day or most days, I do a little bit of writing. I am a creature of habit in terms of the way I live.

It’s a pretty frantic world that we live in.

I’m a liberal arts junkie.

I don’t really remember my folks singing to us, but they read to us.

So I came home and I had a resume and everything, but the only job experience I had was just playing in bars and clubs on my summers off. So, I was temping and stuff during the day and playing music at night.

Some people say that you should not tempt fate and for them I cannot disagree, but I never learned anything from playing it safe. I say fate should not tempt me.

A dreamer born is a hero bred.

I was really young, but I can’t say that I wrote much of anything. I liked to scribble; I thought of it as that. But I was playing guitar and ukulele when I was in second grade.

You know, I didn’t have enough money to quit my day job… the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way.

Life is never a straight line – it’s peaks and valleys. Why would you want to be the same person every day of your life?

It’s a marvelous feeling when someone says ‘I want to do this song of yours’ because they’ve connected to it. That’s what I’m after.

I love to write songs and sing them, and I didn’t really know much more than that. Somehow it’s gotten to the point where a friend can say, “It’s very you,” and that made me feel good.

Emmy Lou Harris introduced me to the work of the Vietnam Veterans of America foundation and the Campaign for a Land Mine Free World.

As far as feeling freedom in my career now versus five years ago… I think if I feel any more free it’s simply because of the experiences that I’ve had, and the wisdom I’ve accumulated from that time.

God forgives somehow we have yet to learn the same.

Was it a light only she could see? A gypsy’s spell? A mystery?

You know, that single girl life and that sense of isolation – that doesn’t leave you just like that. And that’s what that song is about. I remember that, and that is imprinted on me, that sense.

So I think that if I do feel more freedom right now in my career, it’s not so much because I have less at stake but more a sense that I’ve learned more.

I went to college and I never allowed myself to think for an instant that I would have this chance to do this.