Quote Of The Day By Cher: ‘I Always Thought Of Myself As A Bumper Car ‘Cause …’

Born Cherilyn Sarkisian in 1946, Cher only needed one name to become one of the best-known and most distinctive singers of all time. Beginning her career on the fringes of the music industry as a teenage transplant to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, Cher became extremely famous in 1965, around the time that she topped the chart with the duet “I Got You Babe.” Cher had a tragic childhood, endured hardship and divorce as part of Sonny & Cher with Sonny Bono, and briefly tanked her career with one regrettable collaboration in the ’70s with rocker Greg Allman. Yet she reemerged soon after and — almost inexplicably — scored major hits throughout the ’80s and ’90s.

Cher has remained consistently popular and influential for more than 60 years. Over her career, she has keenly picked up on musical and cultural trends and run with them while also pioneering many of her own. Cher understands the importance of resilience and relentless effort, and that’s why she’s got today’s quote of the day.

“Like I always thought of myself as a bumper car ’cause like if I hit the wall, I would just back up and go in a different direction.”

In 2025, Cher assented to a profile by Gayle King of “CBS Mornings.” Reflecting on her long career with stops in multiple genres, eras, and movements, not all of them successful, the musician was hesitant to classify her ability to try new things as “reinvention” or some kind of calculated move. Instead, she likened her many pivots to the behavior of a bumper car driver, who has to act quickly and attempt a new path lest they run into another obstacle and possibly fail again.

Rather than risk continued damage by remaining still, Cher advocates movement and trying unproven new endeavors.

If there’s anyone intimately familiar with creative evolution and personal reinvention, it’s Cher. In responding to the questions placed before her by “CBS Mornings,” she floats the idea that she wouldn’t have lasted as long in the entertainment industry as she has had she never figured out how to be resilient. As such, the sense to try something new after a downturn became a part of her personal philosophy, bordering on second nature.

Cher has enjoyed success in many places and many times, but those triumphs often came after loss and failure. Like a bumper car pulling back after striking a wall, she followed her commercial resistance to Allman and Woman and an unpopular attempt at new wave into new avenues. In 1988, she became an Oscar-winning actor for her work in “Moonstruck.” Then, in 1989, she became the ’80s pop star behind “If I Could Turn Back Time.”

By staying humble and self-deprecating, likening herself to a piece of familiar but rickety old amusement park equipment, Cher shows that reinvention and picking oneself up and starting all over again is something of which everyone is capable. Because, as with the rest of us, it is with Cher: The alternative of stagnation or obscurity just isn’t an attractive option.

• “[I]f you can’t go straight ahead, you go around the corner.”
• “I don’t know where people go to get that rule, ‘Thou shalt be one thing and one thing only for thy entire life.'”
• “My mom said to me, ‘You know, sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.’ And I said, ‘Mom, I am a rich man.'”
• “All of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than others.”
• “You have to know your limitations and then either rise above them or make peace with the fact that you’re never going to.”