Creativity Quote by Paul Simon

Paul Simon’s line cuts like a songwriter’s edit: spare, rhythmic, and quietly ruthless. “Anybody can do bad work” isn’t just a dig at incompetence; it’s a reminder that mediocrity is the default setting of creative life. Bad work happens easily because it requires so little of the maker: no sustained attention, no revision, no taste strong enough to reject your own first draft. The sting lands in the second clause, where Simon shifts from democracy to discrimination: “not everybody does good work.” Talent may be unevenly distributed, but he’s really talking about the rarer combination of craft, stamina, and self-critique.

The subtext is anti-romantic. Coming from a musician who built an immaculate pop catalogue that still feels engineered for emotional clarity, the quote resists the myth that sincerity alone makes art. Good work isn’t a vibe; it’s a discipline. Simon has always been a public case study in that: the obsessive rewrites, the meticulous arrangements, the willingness to cannibalize influences and still sound like himself. In the age of frictionless output - where everyone can publish instantly and “content” rewards volume - the line reads less like gatekeeping than a warning about how hard it is to earn lasting attention.

There’s also an ethical angle tucked inside the pragmatism: doing good work is a choice with costs. It asks for patience, humility, and a tolerance for failure that most people, understandably, would rather avoid. Simon’s point isn’t that excellence is elitist; it’s that it’s expensive.