Quotables   "The image we have would be impossible for Mickey Mouse to maintain. We're just....normal people." KAREN CARPENTER "I had no idea whether I could play 'em or not, but I wanted to and I was very determined. . . but the band director said "That's not really normal." Of course, all you have to tell me is that something's not normal and I'll go for it!!" KAREN CARPENTER Pages 1, 2

"She has to be looking down and just enjoying it all!"
RICHARD CARPENTER

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN
Singer/Close Friend
"She was a good friend, a lovely person and very funny. She had the most incredible voice and her death was a big shock to me. I miss her."

PAUL WILLIAMS
Singer/songwriter
Karen gave voice to my lyrics and in the process really launched my career. I'll be forever grateful for the all too brief association. Her golden voice and magical personality will live forever. It was an honor to be a part of her repetoire ...
( Thanks to Mr. Williams for sending this!)

MISC QUOTES
"We were just born to be a team" (R. Carpenter)

"They'll never be part of the Rock & Roll Hall of fame, neither will I" (John Denver)

"She (Karen) was a very nice girl" (Alan Osmond)

"Everything they did was great as far as we were concerned" (Agnes Carpenter)

"Richard was a key ingredient for Karen's performance" (Herb Alpert)

"I feel like Karen and I were friends, and had I not been in so much in my own stuff at the time I might have recognized a bit of the pain that she was going through...and quite honestly I can't hear one of their records without feeling that I could have been a better friend of her" (John Denver)

"Karen was not happy, she had moments of happiness, but overall, I think her heart was pretty heavy" (Maria Galeazzi)

"To be around Karen's anorexia was frustrating" (John Bettis)

PHIL RAMONE
"I miss her terribly but I know she watching with a smile"

JOHN BETTIS
"In a way, Karen was like my little sister, says John Bettis, who wrote the lyrics to many Carpenters hits. "In a way, she was also like my big sister. She was the voice for my words for a lot of years."

"My words have lost the best voice they ever had"

"She won the battle but lost the war"

GIL FRIESEN
the president of A&M Records
Described her; she was "...the girl next door, always up even when she was down"

SHERWIN BASH
Observation of Karen in the beginning
"Karen was 19 looking like she was 13, very unsophisticated, let's go bowling, grab a coke and a hot dog, put the car top down and go cruising."

"....seemed to want success mostly for Richard's sake."

Karen was very slow to carry herself with confidence as being a focal point. At the Grammy Awards, 1971, she was "shy and retiring, not even holding her head straight but looking coy."

DORTHY HAMILL
Close friend to Karen
"She really gave me a lot of support. She was a true friend before we were really friends. You know, that's a quality that not too many humans have."

DOUG HAVERTY
Former International Publicity Director, A & M
"I think there were two sides to Karen. I mean, there was this intelligent, witty, sarcastic, funny woman....who had a...I think she had a really good grasp on reality and then there was this fantasy child, you know, who wanted to go to the Cinderella castle and get married and live happily ever after."

CASEY KASEM
"She was gifted with a tremendous instrument she knew how to use."

JOHN LENNON
"I just want to tell you, love, that I think you've got a fabulous voice"

ELIZABETH VAN NESS
(Friend of KC)
"People say she sang from the heart, but I feel it was from her soul, some sort of soul that she wasn't even in touch with. She was a very smart girl but not particularly intellectual. Yet when she sang there was an intelligence, a message that borders on profundity, so well thought out and expressive that it came from something beyond her."

DIONNE WARWICK
"and I never understood the, nor will I ever understand, what it was that she saw through her eyes, in the mirror"