YouSaid · the spoken record

Carole Bayer Sager

lines on the record: 39
first: 2026-01-07
most recent: 2026-01-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yes, and that was the big thing. God helped me open my heart. Help me open my heart so that it can be available not just to the people I love, but to anyone who comes in my path. Let me be able to be loving. Let me be able to give something.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shut the doors. Your sister's coming. So I didn't know how to open my heart to family, but it took till now for me to have appreciation. All that God had always laid in front of me, but I didn't know how to accept and say, Thank you, God. I knew how to make a gratitude list, but I didn't know how to live it.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it took me that long to get to that place where I can say, I love my life, I love my friends, I love my family, I love my seven grandchildren, which I came from a very small family, and my mother was not inclusive of family.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Completely, completely. And when I'm giving back now, that's another way I feel very fulfilled. When I can give back to others. And I've gotten so much from this life. And I'm so blessed. And, you know, you asked me a question. You asked me, how do you get to this place sooner? And I listen to you and I put the answer in my book. I didn't say it was you, but I said a friend asked me, how do you get to this place sooner? And my answer was, you don't. You don't. You get there when you get there. You go through everything you go through. You set an intention. You know one day you want to be in that place, but you don't get there.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Less alone and more safe. And that's what I wanted all my life. So if I could put that out there so others could feel it, then I feel I did what I was supposed to do.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think my purpose here on earth has been to connect. To other people and have them feel less alone. Because I think my songs at their best made people feel as people came up and told me, oh my God, you got me through a painful divorce or your first album, you know, they were little cults.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think I've had a personal purpose. Yes. Which was To transform from what was a very dark Childhood Maybe I could say, I'm sorry to say, first 35 years of my life, I wasn't. Even when I was having great success, and this is why I say people shouldn't compare their Insights to anybody else's outsides because I think people could look at me and say, Wow, I'll take her Look at her life, Bert Backrack. Look at her life. Marvin I wasn't inhabiting all of me. I was only half In my life. There was part of me that was in fear, there was part of me that was so insecure I could barely. So I would say my purpose personal purpose was to transform from dark to I think my purpose.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe you'd still be in Mississippi or Milwaukee. Mississippi. I certainly wouldn't have been as happy. I wouldn't be here”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Suddenly clicked in. It's not like I wasn't doing the work, Oprah. I was in therapy at 21 years old because I... Not because I thought, oh, let me explore myself. No, I couldn't function. I couldn't. Sometimes I sat in my therapist's office for a day when she couldn't even see me, but she was kind enough to let me stay in her living room because I didn't know how to live in the world without fear. I mean, I was very damaged as a very little girl. Some people are more sensitive. Sometimes it's in the womb. Who knows? I don't blame anyone. I'm not, I forgive my mother completely. I wouldn't be sitting here talking to Oprah Winfrey if I didn't have my mother who brought me into this world. I forgive her because she made me Be seen and heard And my father loved me unconditionally. I love him. There was no”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's so hard and so sad to have missed not been present for so much of what other people enjoyed around me. But it all changed, that's why I wrote this book, it all changed, I mean it's like When I met Bob and I was in my late 40s when I met Bob, my life changed because finally in my life. And it's wrong to say it took a man. I'd rather say to you, I found myself and I went through this world. I traveled the globe. I came into my inner peace. And then I had inner peace, and then I met this man, but no. I met this man, and he said he loved me, and he didn't care whether What I did, or what my accomplishments were. And he meant it, and nobody had ever said that to me and meant it in my life. Nobody. I mean, and he didn't. Do it by giving me lavish things.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to be me. Now I will say when Bird and I run the Grammy, for that's what friends are for, I was thrilled. I was delighted. But I still wasn't. Peace with myself One week later I was supposed to go in and be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And it was with, if you can imagine, my idol was Carol King. She knows this. So it was with Carol King and Jerry Gaffin. And get this. It was Paul McCartney and John Lennon. And we just won the Grammy and I was supposed to go in. And I sort of had a mini nervous breakdown. I couldn't move out of my bed. I couldn't go to New York to accept that because I feel, and this sounds so crazy, but I feel somewhere back in time. Made a deal with the devil Give me a fantastic life and I promise you I won't enjoy it.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was at, you're talking about when nobody does it better, it was nominated for an Oscar. And I swear to all of you. I was partly praying we didn't win because I didn't feel that I could make it from my seat to the stage and Be coherent or even get there. I don't know what I was feeling, but I felt disappointment and relief at the exact time that they announced the winner was You Light Up My Life.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when I hear the prayer even today, I just feel thank you, God, for allowing this song to come through me because it's everything, I think it's my theme of my life. I think all I ever wanted in my life. To feel safe, to feel loved, and to feel like I could help others. Feel the same. And that song does that for me.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, it did, and it came. I'm sorry to say this. It came effortlessly. And it came, and we knew it was, I knew. Yes. And David has since told me that the prayer is one of only three songs in the world that's played at both weddings and funerals. The other two songs are Ave Maria and Wind Ben Ben Ben Ben Beneath My”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You hear that song? It's like it has gone to its fullest potential. And that's what we all hope to do with our lives. That's what we hope to do in this conversation, right? That's what we hope to do.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Play that again And he did, and it was beautiful. And I suddenly started to hear, I pray you'll be our eyes and watch us from above. And I suddenly... Know when I think about it now, the song is beautiful. What is that song without Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli when they sing it together? They take me to a place, and I say that, and I guess I say that in the song, guide me to a place.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was written exactly the mother was sending her daughter off on an adventure that had danger in it. And I said to David, she should sing a prayer for her daughter. He said, that's a nice idea. And he started to play. I mean, when David starts to play, I have been so fortunate because I have written babyface, Kenny Babyface Edward. David Foster, Carly Simon, Carol King. I mean, they just have to play. And it was so pretty what he was playing. And I said, wait, wait. And I said, play that again, which I think is my, that's the line I say the most in my life probably. Play that again, because they can go buy it. A musician can go right by that moment that you just heard that you want to grab.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The prayer is the song I'm proudest of writing of any song in my life, co-writing. And I wrote it with David Foster. We were doing an animated film.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will you put all of those voices together? Those voices together with Bert at the keyboard and Bert's orchestration and strings coming in when they came in and Gladys, everybody lifted it one. See, to me, a great record sometimes. Is when it just keeps lifting you higher than you thought you could be. And then you're just there, you're just there, and it's so much more than what you wrote. It's so much more than the song. Now it becomes the The artist, the arrangement. The record, you know.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what friends are for. And Elton said, if this isn't a number one record, I will leave the business. We know he wouldn't have left the business, but still it was a very positive statement.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but when I heard I knew the verse, and then Bert had a melody. It was about friendship, and that's the title came to me.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know what happened to pieces. I just knew that the next line when he played it to me was, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm glad I got this chance to say that I do believe I love you. I mean, it just felt like that's what I was hearing.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An instant An instant, and I didn't know what we were going to write about, but certain melodies bring out Feelings in me that then come into words.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And guess what? It is so much better that way. It is so much better that way lyrically. It is so much better that way, melodically, and it's so much better that it start a song like that because you're coming in in the middle of thought. Middle of it. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. And who knew any of that? At the time. That's when you're being, that's when something greater than you is inspiring you to make something more than you thought you were making.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's some real truth in that. For me... Being primarily a lyricist, although I studied music most of my life For me, I know that when I hear something that has the potential of being a beautiful melody, it moves me in a way that I suddenly hear words that would not have ordinarily come to me and they just start to come because the music moves me to a place. The best story is that that's what friends are for. Where Bert played me. And I said, oh, that's pretty. How about I never thought I'd feel this way? And he said, that's not what I played. I played da da. I said, yes, that's lovely. I never thought I, Carol, I'm playing da. But what's the difference? It's just a 16th note. It's a difference to me. I'm playing da da da da da da da da da da da da. Okay, so then just say and I never thought I'd feel this way.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm old already. I mean, who cares? Who's looking? What am I doing to myself? It's It's just a mind game to just not allow yourself comple Forget about success, you know, in terms of songs. That's fantastic. I'm grateful for that talent and I'm grateful for the success I've had. But I've struggled to become a better, more conscious, more loving, more giving person in my life. And those things have come to me later in life. With more awareness and more awareness and studying Kabbalah and studying Buddhism and studying and reading and always searching, always searching for that place of peace and And open heart.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's how you make yourself feel bad about yourself. And it's why, and I've worked out a lot of things in my life. I'm very grateful to be able to tell you. But I have never worked out to this day a healthy relationship with food. I mean, it's just either I'm dieting or I'm gaining weight. And I'm so conscious of what will I eat for lunch? What will I eat for dinner? Will I eat dinner? Maybe I won't eat dinner tonight. Maybe I'll just have a protein drink because I ate so much at lunch. But that looks so good. I mean, it's just a constant. And who cares? I mean, I say,”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a tough one. And that voice, though years later my mother was so proud of me. But that voice Comes in your head. And you don't need anyone to tell you that you're saying it to your”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pushed that woman away, and she said, They should be ashamed of themselves. I mean, what do they want to do? Just keep their fatties, you know? She wasn't wrong, but it was like, you know, then I had to go put on all these clothes that did unfortunately fit me. And we bought this very unattractive hot pink dress. And as I write in the book, when I wore it, there was a lot of pink coming at you. Because I was a fat little child and that mindset of my, you see, we internalize as well you know. Messages we got in our child”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and then my mother said, okay, we're going to go to plus sized store. And they had. Children's clothing, and I'll never forget this. We get off the elevator at the children's floor, and there's a lady there. I don't know what she looked like, but I do remember that silver tray filled with chocolate cookies. And she said, would you like a cookie? And as my hand reached out to take the biggest cookie on the plate, my party put it.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother saw me as an extension of her, I guess, narcissistic self. And it wasn't good enough for her. I actually do write about that. We were going out to get me a party dress, and shopping was another one of those horrible experiences. It's like other friends of mine. Oh, we're going shopping. And it was like. Oh no, I have to go shopping because a heavy girl.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I wasn't worried about my weight. I write in the book my weight was perfect only once. At six pounds seven ounces on the day I was born. Yeah, I don't know. You know, I know I'm not heavy today and people hear me and they go, what is the matter with you? What are you talking about? But I do have a picture in my book of me at 10 years old and I was...”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's also where I live. I was a songwriter that gave me my identity, my songs were expressing my feelings, and there was no place else in my life that I was as connected and as high functioning and as positive as I was in the lane of songwriting. In fact, when I got outside that lane, It's kind of like channels on a television, some channels come in. And other channels are all fuzzy, and you go, what's the matter with my television Well, if you think of All of us as giant televisions Certain of our channels come in clearer than others. Songwriting was perfectly clear. Nothing could mess that up. When I was writing a song, I wasn't being a hypochondriac. I wasn't afraid of dying. I wasn't afraid of all the fears and anxieties that plagued me as a small little person and you weren't worried about it.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Creativity is my spiritual practice, which has taken the form of songwriting for most of my life. But it can be used in other ways, even in giving back. Others, which is very important in our third”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it certainly has been. There came a point where, as I got older, that I felt the same number of people weren't calling me to write film songs. They weren't calling me to write for so-and-so, or do you have a song for so-and-so. So I shifted and started painting. And then I wrote this book. Because what I learned in my life is for me. I need to be creative. I need to use this energy that's inside of me to create.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, well, that's when I knew I could write a hit song. I knew I was a songwriter in high school when that's all I wanted to do was go back home and write songs. Just finish my homework and write songs and just keep listening to the radio and writing more and more songs. And of course they didn't go anywhere, but I knew this is what I wanted to do and this is what I had to do. And I wrote songs as a very little girl. I would put my lyrics to melodies that were on the radio at the time or on television and I would sing them for my parents.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yes. That's how it was for me always from when I was very small. I'd hear a song and it would just become a mantra in my head. It would go over and over. And the same once I was writing them, over and over, almost to the point of like stop. I don't want to hear that. But I couldn't help it. We've all had that.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you're right, and I think it's when the Perfect, the lyric that fits a melody just perfectly. It's not the melody, it's not the lyric, it's the combination where one and one become three. And I feel That those songs, and they can be, it's so unfair, really, because they can be written sometimes in two hours like that. But that song can cross boundaries all over the world because music is so universal. And someone can slave writing a book for three years, four years, and it may not touch as many people as one universal song that goes out into the universe.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've always believed in my heart that the best songs, the ones that resonate in my soul and therefore go out into the world and resonate in other people's. Don't come from us, they come through us I always say a little prayer before I go into my music room. And it's a sort of a prayer of intention. Please let me bring forth something. Help me that will. I mean, certainly later in my songwriting, I tried very much for my songs to have some ability to touch others and help them. Be in a better place than before they heard the song. But I do try to write in the most simple way Feelings and Whatever I'm writing about that touch the heart.”
2026-01-07 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Carole Bayer Sager: Music as Prayer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source