Quotes from Mary Chapin Carpenter

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.

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.

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.

God forgives somehow we have yet to learn the same.

Carry with you maps and string, flashlights, friends who make you sing, and stars to help you find your place, music, hope, and amazing grace.

We all have two lives. The one we are given and the one we create.

I take my chances. I can't cling to remorse or regret.

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 pretty frantic world that we live in.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

A dreamer born is a hero bred.

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.

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.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want to try it again and again, and a lot of times my fellow musicians have to hold me back and say, "Nah, I think we got it."

There's two lanes running down this road which ever side your on, accounts for where you want to go or what you're running from.

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.

It's like the code of living by yourself. People who are single know what I'm talking about. You eat standing up, reading the paper. Or you say to yourself, this isn't even cutting it, I'm taking a TV dinner and I'm getting in bed here.