Carly Simon

No, because I was always nervous about being onstage.

Well, I make every song I sing personal. I've never chosen a song that wasn't.

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.

Then I went through a big Peggy Lee stage, then I became Annie Ross, then Judy Collins.

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.

I had this terrible stammer, so I couldn't really speak properly until I was 16 or 17.

I try to get to those peculiar and particular things that you never think of to say.

I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing.

I'm still more comfortable with standards than with my own songs.

As a singer I tried on all these hats, these voices, these clothes, and eventually out came me.

But when we listened to the radio, it was Bill Haley and the Comets or the Everly Brothers.

You're lucky you had that when you were 20. I sure didn't. I was overweight, and I had acne.

No, because I've never really changed my style that much.

There was a French singer, Francoise Hardy - I used to look at her pictures and try to dress like her.

Well, I tried to get a record deal in 1966 or '67, and everyone thought I was too eclectic.

My father was a classical pianist, and my mother was a singer of just about everything.

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.

We are in this period now where we all are trying to be in shape physically and deny ourselves any pleasure.

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.

I think that most people really know if it's a really great album.

So I suppose this slightly mature fashion sense happened because of what I had.

We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big.

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

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.

My scar is beautiful. It looks like an arrow.