Creativity Quote by Paul Simon

Prophecy, in Paul Simon's hands, isn’t thundering scripture from a mountaintop; it’s graffiti, cheap paint bleeding into concrete, and a rumor passed between renters who can’t afford to be heard any louder. By relocating “the prophets” to subway walls and tenement halls, Simon flips authority on its head: the people pushed to the margins become the ones telling the truth, or at least leaving evidence of it. The image is democratic and accusatory at once. If revelation is everywhere, why does no one change?

The line lands because it treats the city as a nervous system. Subways and tenements are not just settings; they’re circulatory routes for loneliness, poverty, and overlooked warnings. “Written” implies permanence, a public record. “Whispered” implies fear, intimacy, and self-censorship. Then comes the masterstroke: “the sounds of silence,” a phrase that turns absence into ambience. Silence isn’t empty here; it’s crowded with unspoken knowledge, with the things people feel but can’t translate into power.

Context matters: “The Sound of Silence” arrives in the mid-1960s, when mass media is exploding and public trust is fraying. Simon is suspicious of the idea that communication equals understanding. The “prophets” aren’t celebrities or politicians; they’re the anonymous, the ignored, the ones whose messages show up as street-level text because official channels are either indifferent or rigged. The intent isn’t mystical. It’s a warning about a society so loud it can’t hear what it’s already saying.