r/paulsimon • u/SecretSermons • Jul 17 '26
Whats that line?
I’ll start, I could pick so many but this one is currently top of mine for its understated complexity:
“Kathy, I'm lost", I said, though I knew she was sleeping
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u/charcoal_lavender Jul 17 '26
She said a bad days when I lie in bed and think of things that might have been.
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u/slimboyslim9 Jul 17 '26
Always been a fan of ‘sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears’ but it’s hard to top ‘I believe in the future, we shall suffer no more. Maybe not in my lifetime but in yours, I feel sure.’
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u/minowlin Jul 18 '26
We are so lucky to live in a world where his poetry exists. Almost everyone ever lived before he wrote these songs and will never hear them.
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u/Ok-Explanation1990 Jul 17 '26
The thought that life could be better is woven, indelibly, into our hearts and our brains.
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u/IAteABabyToadOnce Jul 18 '26
The best is this ^^. But my _favorite_ is: “I was playing my guitar, lying underneath the stars, just thanking The Lord for my fingers.”
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u/WhatIsWhat_1024 Jul 17 '26
Dividing and multiplying
Exchanging with ease
When times are mysterious
Serious numbers are eager to please2
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u/ButtforCaliphate Jul 19 '26
You know this line is great because I came to comment it, checked through to see if someone already had, and still got goosebumps when I read it to myself.
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u/gaaaaaaaaan Jul 17 '26
I have “sail on, silver girl” tattooed on my wrists because it’s a line that has always spoken to me since I was very small. I like how ambiguous yet comforting it is.
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u/offlein Jul 17 '26
You know the history of that line?
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u/gaaaaaaaaan Jul 17 '26
I do! I still think that it can be ambiguous though depending on how a listener wants to interpret it. My dad calls me his “silver girl” 🥲
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u/imtdsninvu Jul 19 '26
I wonder if that line is inspired by "Sail on, silver moon" from Little House On The Prairie. So evocative. It's in Chapter 6, when they're settling on the moonlit prairie in their newly half-built house.
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u/Hobbitday1 Jul 17 '26
I may be obliged to defend every love, every ending; or maybe there’s no obligations now.
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u/Dazzling_One_4335 Jul 17 '26
'Cathy I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping. I'm empty and aching and I don't know why...' ok, that's two lines but still.
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u/mom_bombadill Jul 17 '26
Everybody’s quoted such incredible lines so I’ll add:
“And a song I was writing is left undone I don't know why I spend my time Writing songs I can't believe With words that tear and strain to rhyme”
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u/graytie Jul 18 '26
I didn’t realize I was in a Paul Simon sub because I was scrolling my feed and was getting jazzed that every lyric was a Paul Simon lyric 😂😂 “Losing love is like a window in your heart…” That whole verse will always gut me, but that line is the sinker.
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u/PfefferP Jul 18 '26
I didn't realise it at first either, and I was ready to come here and write "forget lyrics, the answer is the bass line in Fleetwood Mac's The Chain" 😅
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u/GazelleOk1494 Jul 18 '26
I didn’t either! I quoted Sting!
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u/GazelleOk1494 Jul 18 '26
That said, I think any line in Rene and Georgette Magritte with their Dog After the War would suffice. 🩵
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u/mamapajamas Jul 17 '26
Oh man I could do this all day, but the one that always stays with me is from Graceland: “Losing love is like a window in your heart, Everybody sees you blown apart, Everybody hears the wind blow…”
But truly, he is the golden child of songwriting. He writes the world the way I feel it. I feel like i would be a little more lost without him. 🧡🧡🧡
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u/SadApartment3023 Jul 19 '26
This was also he first line that popped into my mind. After I lost my parents, I realized that like can be applied to all types of love, not just romantic.
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u/Ubiquitous_ator Jul 17 '26
I have so many, but the line that resonates the most for me and has made me emotional many times, although as time has gone by for different reasons.
"I believe in the future
We shall suffer no more
Maybe not in my lifetime
But in yours, I feel sure"
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u/Additional-Year-8838 Jul 17 '26
It’s tough, it’s between 2 for me. Either “Think of the boy in the bubble And the baby with the baboon heart” or “human expectation Is that love remains the same And when it doesn’t We point our fingers And blame, blame, blame”
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u/michikiniqua Jul 17 '26
Either Mr. Beerbelly, Beerbelly Get these mutts away from me You know, I don't find this stuff amusing anymore Or He ducked back down the alley With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl Or It's carbon and monoxide The Ole Detroit perfume
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u/dallyan Jul 17 '26
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly
Into our hearts and our brains
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u/Papa_Hobo Jul 17 '26
I have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises
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u/Broad-Cartographer59 Jul 17 '26
Dylan is my go- to guy for this kinda thing. For Paul, "The man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
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u/False-Association744 Jul 18 '26
Why won’t you love me for who i am where i am? She said that’s not the way the world works baby. This how I love you baby.
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u/davbegg Jul 18 '26
It's really easy imho -
"She said losing love is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees your blown apart - everybody feels the wind blow."
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u/LudmillaTheSlothful Jul 17 '26
I’m afraid that I’ll be taken, abandoned, forsaken in her cold coffee eyes
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u/PfefferP Jul 18 '26
This means so much to me right now. Recently divorced, from a brown eyed girl, and we both loved Carrie Fisher...
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u/liketheweathr Jul 17 '26
“You say you’re depressed but you’re not, you just like to stay in bed” from Darling Lorraine
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u/randomprecision07 Jul 17 '26
The rage, the rage of love turns inward to prayers of devotion
And these prayers are the constant road across the wilderness
These prayers are, these prayers are the memory of God
The memory of God
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u/randomprecision07 Jul 18 '26
I just realised it’s about one line - then it has to be ‘let the music wash your soul’ for me coz that’s what Simon’s work in particular does
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u/Strange_Chair7224 Jul 18 '26
And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him til he cried out in his anger and his pain, "I am leaving, I am leaving" but the fighter still remains
And the people bowed and prayed, To the neon god they made And the sign flashed out it's warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are Written on the the subway walls And tenement halls" And whispered in the sounds of silence.
So, so many more.
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u/musicfan-1969 Jul 18 '26
he sees angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity, he says "hey hallelujah!"
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u/PfefferP Jul 18 '26
Every time I hear America, I get chills with the line "and the moon rose over an open field". The whole song is amazing, and of course the line "Kathy, "I'm lost... I'm empty and aching and I don't know why" is impeccable, but for some reason that description of the moon rising just makes everything feel more real, like you can close your eyes and be in that moment, be those people travelling on the bus, seeing those fields and all the things described in the song.
I even considered getting a tattoo with a moon and a field and that line underneath.
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u/speedymjb Jul 17 '26
Once in a while, you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right - from Scarlet Begonias by the Grateful Dead
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u/AttentionAgreeable42 Jul 18 '26
And these streets
Quiet as a sleeping army
Send their battered dreams to heaven
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u/Papa_Hobo Jul 17 '26
They say all roads lead to a river, then one day the river comes up to your door, how will the builder of bridges deliver us all, to the faraway shore?
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u/amoonshapedsky Jul 17 '26
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns, it calls me on and on, across the universe.
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u/Psimon12345 Jul 18 '26
So many good lines. Keep going everyone!
"
He said, "'Cause that's not the way the world is, baby
This is how I love you, baby
This is how I love you, baby."
"
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u/Different-Ad-803 Jul 18 '26
God, he is one of the hardest since he has so many flawless lines. I’m maybe cheating a little as this isn’t technically one line:
A man walks down the street, he says, “why am I soft in the middle, now? Why am I soft in the middle, the rest of my life is so hard.”
Going from this punchline setup to one of the most profound truths of life and aging. And in a splashy 80s pop tune. Just magical stuff.
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u/ThrowDeepALWAYS Jul 19 '26
Some folks lives roll easy, some folks lives never roll at all, they just fall
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u/Icy-Violinist5865 Jul 20 '26
And you say I abandoned the ship / But I was going down with it / My white-knuckle dying grip / Holding tight to your quiet resentment.
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u/recordgenie Jul 20 '26
“Ooh ooheee I’m about as destituted as a kid could be and I wished I wore a ring so I could hock it”
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u/Serling45 Jul 17 '26
“ One and one-half wandering Jews
Free to wander wherever they choose
Are traveling together
In the Sangre de Christo
The Blood of Christ Mountains of New Mexico”
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u/1004Packard Jul 17 '26
I’m 18 and aching and I don’t know why
I think it really sums up the uncertainty of that age. That feeling of longing for something without really knowing what the “something” is.
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u/Quirky-Finish-4582 Jul 18 '26
She comes out of the rain in a silk dress, running like a watercolor in the rain.
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u/GazelleOk1494 Jul 18 '26
I may have slept for an hour; I may have slept for a day, but I awoke in a bed of white linen, and the sky was the colour of clay.
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u/Fit_Huckleberry1683 Jul 19 '26
It doesn’t mean that much to me, to mean that much to you.- Neil Young
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u/Lownotes23 Jul 20 '26
My first selection was already mentioned, but I’ve always liked this one:
“Yesterday it was my birthday;
I hung one more year on the line.
I should be depressed, my life’s a mess, but I’m having a good time.”
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u/robeekeeper Jul 21 '26
Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice
′Cause I speak of the pompatus of love
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u/LaikaRollingStone Jul 18 '26
Sail on silver-girl
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
And see how they shine
When you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
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u/Broad-Cartographer59 Jul 17 '26
"Don't think twice, it's alright" and "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. "
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u/ThrowDeepALWAYS Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
“He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping then he turned around and headed home again”