Top 50 Mary Chapin Carpenter Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

2. “In this world, you’ve a soul for a compass and a heart for a pair of wings.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

3. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

4. “Think I’ll flip a coin, I’m a winner either way Mmmmmm, I feel lucky today.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

5. “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?”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

6. “We’ve got two lives – one we’re given and the other one we make.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

7. “Every sleepy boy and girl in every bed around the world- Can hear the stars up in the sky whispering a lullaby.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

8. “I take my chances. I can’t cling to remorse or regret.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

9. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

11. “A dreamer born is a hero bred...”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

12. “The bedrock thing of country music is, it’s about storytelling. I feel like I was able to find a niche because I connected to that in some way.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

13. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

14. “I’m a liberal arts junkie.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

15. “I’ve crossed lines of word and wire and both have cut me deep. I’ve been frozen out and I’ve been on fire, and the tears are mine to weep.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

16. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

17. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

18. “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.””

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

19. “Fool you once, you are forgiven. Fool you twice, you’re just a fool.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

20. “I woke to find every window open I woke to find the heavy door ajar And I walked outside and stood upon the hilltop And gazed once more on a bright morning star I walked outside and every bird was singing As I found again my bright morning star.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

21. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

22. “Was it a light only she could see? A gypsy’s spell? A mystery?”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

23. “God forgives somehow we have yet to learn the same.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

24. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

25. “I feel that it’s nothing if not an incredible privilege to be able to get up on stage and play for people, and I don’t ever take it for granted.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

27. “I feel like politics have always informed what I do. If you know anything about my music, you know I’ve never been shy about stating how I vote.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

28. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

29. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

30. “The joy of being in the studio is having people being utterly free to throw out their ideas.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

31. “As far as politically how country music goes, it’s true that it’s regarded from a distance as a genre of music that at different times, the more right elements of the political spectrum have claimed for their own.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

32. “I think topical songwriting is a real gift, and it’s hard not to be pedantic and show up with the sledgehammer message.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

33. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

35. “I grew up listening to everything, and when I got signed to a record deal out of Nashville, that was my introduction to what was happening in country music.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

36. “20-some years ago, I’d have a big old radio with a tape deck, and I’d hit record and try to get something down on the tape, but nowadays, I can use my handy little smart-phone; I sing into the app for voice memo.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

37. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

38. “I certainly felt the desire to reach as many people as I could; I wanted to make the most of this opportunity, sure. But I wouldn’t call it pressure the way we’re thinking of it now.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

39. “It seemed inevitable to try to address my feelings about everything that had happened. To a certain degree, it felt cathartic, but it’s less cathartic to me than it is illuminating and helping me navigate my own feelings.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

44. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

45. “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.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

46. “Everything changes in every genre, whether it’s pop, rock or country.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

47. “About age ten, we moved from the place where I was born, moved overseas.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

48. “I know some artists who come out of country music and the three sessions a day work ethic where you walk in, and you’re told you play this note, this note, and this note, and you don’t vary it. I know that works great for some people. It wouldn’t work for me.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

49. “I feel like they’re different creatures, live and in the studio, but that’s what makes it so interesting to me. If they didn’t have any different shadings or colors, you might as well be a hologram or something.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter

50. “In the late 80s, artists could be signed to labels and be nurtured. It wasn’t, “We’re going to give you one shot, and if you don’t measure up, you’re gone”.”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter