Conor Oberst Quotes

I kind of go in waves with reading. Sometimes I read all the time, and sometimes I can't get settled enough to focus.

It's glorious to be able to go onto the Internet and hear any kind of music anywhere, from anywhere, and get it instantly. But there's also something glorious about having a record with a sleeve and looking at the artwork, putting it on the turntable and playing it, there's still something romantic to me about that.

I'm happy just because I found out I am really no one

In theory, I always think I should totally go back to school, because I don't want to start sinking slowly ... I want to learn, blah blah blah. Then I think about actually going and sitting in classes and, man, it sounds terrible.

Although Omaha is my birthplace and the place I grew up, I don't see myself spending extended amounts of time there. I feel almost more comfortable and more at peace in New York.

To me, a political song is also a personal song. Most political activism has been driven by empathy for other people and the desire for a world that's less divisive. Even if songs aren't overtly political, they can make a listener more empathetic.

When you're 16 or 17, I think like most people that age, the first time you experience certain things in life, whether it's heartbreak or death or love, obviously it's going to seem like a much bigger deal.

There's a small amount of super-wealthy people that want to maintain their billions and billions of dollars. Those are the people who are really making the decisions.

Because the truth is that gossip is as good as gospel in this town. You can save face but you won't ever save your soul. And that's a fact.

Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt. Do you like to hurt? I do, I do then hurt me.

I really believe in the way the energy can consolidate in certain geographical spots. You can find it in a lot of different places, beautiful natural spots, or if you look at Islam or Judaism or Christianity, these ideas of holy places.

The only thing major labels can really offer is money.

For a sunrise or a sunset, you're manic or you're depressed. Will you ever feel ok?

I do think that music has a special ability to get behind enemy lines and win hearts and minds.

I went right from wunderkind to washed up. Old. Been around too long. That's just the way I feel. That's my internal dialogue.

I'm proud that with 'Bright Eyes' we've always experimented and tried to make a different record every time out.

On good days, I can see the inherent goodness in people, and that human beings have a high capacity to learn and adapt. But things like the environment, nuclear weapons and ideas like peak oil - if you think about them too much, they can really freak you out.

We [ Desaparecidos] try to be the opposite of apathetic. There are so many young people in America that are apathetic.

If there's a criticism of 'Cassadaga' that I agreed with, it's that we left things in the oven too long, that songs were overstuffed, with too many ideas competing for space.

The one recurring theme in my writing, and in my life in general, is confusion. The fact that anytime you think you really know something, you're going to find out you're wrong - that is the rule. The moments where you think you have something figured out, those are the exceptions.

I think our music is more about seeing ourselves in each other and trying to find a more humanistic viewpoint for the world.

Considering our history, I can think of nothing more American than an immigrant.

Hip-hop music has done a very good job of maintaining the political context, where they stand and not giving a sh-t what people think.

It's in vogue to have a cause and give money in charity. But to actually speak up and say something like, I'm pissed about this - that doesn't seem to be very popular unless you're writing a blog or tweeting.

I need some meaning I can memorize. The kind I have always seems to slip my mind.

When I started writing songs, I was doing it for myself and a small circle of friends. And gradually, over the years, an audience became involved.

If I could act like This was my real life, And not some cage where I've been placed, Well then, I could tell you The truth like I used to And not be afraid of sounding fake.

So much of listening to lyrically driven music is projecting your own feelings and experiences into the music.

I'm not the most technically savvy person in the world. Like, I'm not good at troubleshooting when stuff happens to my digital music.

When you write a song, the goal is not to convey the details of your life. You should write a memoir or something if that's what you're going to do.

Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts I never really dreamed of heaven much Until we put him in the ground. There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free

Pronouns really don't matter in a song - 'I' or 'he' or 'she' or even subscribing a lyric to an inanimate object.

Cause I swear that I'm dying, slowly but its happening.

The idea of forever is kind of ridiculous, which is unfortunate because it's kind of a nice thing to say, you know. I think it softens the blow of mortality and having to say goodbye to everything you know and everyone you love and all that kind of thing.

I have a lot of friends that take that position of extreme cynicism, and I just can't let myself go to that place. It's just too easy, and it's just too defeatist.

If you think about Protestant and Catholic or Shiite and Sunni, they are basically the same thing ... one eats with their left hand, the other eats with their right hand.

We've all seen the power music has to spread messages of solidarity and hope.

So when your new eyes meet mine they won't see no lies, just love ...

I like to feel the burn of the audience's eyes when I'm whispering all my darkest secrets into the microphone.

I think it is more like a ghost that has been following us both. Something vague that we're not seeing, something more like a feeling.

Art is essentially communication. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. That's why people make art, so other people can relate to it.

I understand why people get desensitized and roll their eyes when they hear a protest song, or even a politician making some flowery speech. It doesn't really change anything.

I started to sink like the moon tends to do if you stare at it too long Then you blink and it's gone

Since the songs were written over a five-year period, I think these are little snapshots. Some people call it political or topical, but I think each song is self-contained. I think it fits together as a picture of the last half-decade of time.

One by one I drowned all the people I'd been.

For a song I was bought Now I lie when I talk With a careful eye on the cue card. Onto a stage I was pushed, With my sorrow well rehearsed. So give me all your pity and your money, now (all of it).

One of my favorite modern American authors is Denis Johnson. I'm deeply inspired by all of his work - I rip him off constantly.

We made love on the living room floor with the noise in the background of a televised war and in that defeaning pleasure i thought i heard someone say if we walk away they'll walk away

Screaming is bad for the voice, but it's good for the heart.

I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie.

I have a car in Nebraska. When I bought it, they gave me a satellite radio, and there's an 'indie-rock' station. It's just nothing I'm interested in.

In a coma, you don't dream, you just hope that someone sits with you.

Much of appreciating art or music is really the interpretation of the listener. To a certain extent it's projection - it's what people need or lack in themselves that they then put upon these people that they admire.

I always embrace the worst-case scenario.

You can do a lot to shape the feeling of a song by the way you record it.

My favorite rhymes are sort of half-rhymes where you might just get the vowel sound the same, but it's not really a true rhyme. That gives you far more flexibility to capture the feeling you're trying to express. But sometimes it's best not to have any rhyme.

You can only really understand good if you have bad, so the idea of heaven or anything that happens for eternity, even if it's nice, I can't imagine it being nice forever. Even the idea of forever is kind of ridiculous, which is unfortunate because it's kind of a nice thing to say, you know.

I enjoy recording and performing, but it's the songwriting that I love most.

We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul.

The world's become a little too mean.

In many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio; we build the songs that way.

I drug your ghost across the country, and we plotted out my death. Every city and memory we whispered "Here is where you rest." Well I was determined in Chicago but I dug my teeth into my knees And I settled for a telephone, sang into your machine: "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

So I wait for the day when I'll hear the key as it turns in the lock And the guard will say to me, Oh my patient prisoner you waited for this day and finally, you are free! You are free! You are free!

There's a lot of optimism in changing scenery, in seeing what's down the road.

And me I'm in my bedroom drawing in my notebook Because my hand thinks I'm an artist But my heart knows I'm a poet It's just words they mean so little to me.

Music is unique because you can get behind enemy lines a little bit, get into people's houses and into their heads, on their stereos, and win hearts and minds.

I like science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick and Vonnegut, and I really like Margaret Atwood, 'The Handmaid's Tale.' And you know, so much of science fiction has to do with predicting what's to come, so I think that's really interesting.

I'd rather be working for a paycheck, than waiting to win the lottery. Besides, maybe this time it's different, I mean, I really think you like me.

I remember having to quit school and quit my job. I just sort of moved all my stuff into other people's places. Within, like, six months, I was able to earn enough money from touring to rent a place again.

Love's an excuse to get hurt.

The Bible's blind, the Torah's deaf, the Qur'an is mute; if you burned them all together you'd get close to the truth.

And your eyes must do some raining if you're ever gonna grow / When crying don't help, you can't compose yourself / It's best to compose a poem, an honest verse of longing / Or a simple song of hope.

The first music I ever got into was the '80s alternative bands that my brother listened to, like The Cure and The Smiths and R.E.M. and Fugazi. I can remember specifically saying The Cure was my favorite band back in second grade.

A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike.

I've always been slightly preoccupied with death or whatever those kind of silly big questions people will tell you to not spend your time worrying about.

To finish a song is the best feeling in the world.

I like the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park. I love how it's been rained on forever and looks worn down by time.

I think there's so much about Rasta culture that's interesting. Just the idea of preaching one-ness, that we're all in this together.

We [Desaparecidos] have to make the message and the music and the packaging as appealing as possible - as Taco Bell as possible: mediocre and no one can be offended by it and everyone can sort of enjoy it and we can play it on the radio.

My family is Catholic. I went to a Catholic school, that kind of thing, so that was my childhood for sure.

No lies, just love.

I try to keep the idea that there's an audience in as little space in my mind as possible, but you can't erase it entirely, the idea that when you're sitting down to write a song, people are going to hear it.

And in the morning when the sun rise. Look in the water, see the blue sky. As if heaven has been laid there at our feet.

There is no Hell when you die so don't look so worried

I drink to stay warm, and to kill selected memories

I swear that I'm dying slowly but it's happening, and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere ... just take me there.

I want to be the surgeon who cuts you open Who fixes all of life's mistakes I want to be the house that you were raised in The only place where you feel safe. I wanna be a shower in the morning That wakes you up and makes you clean I know I'm just the weather against your window As you sleep through a winter's dream

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of my all-time favorite writers. I feel spiritual when reading his words, even though they're translated. I wish desperately that I could read it in its original language. I already feel like I'm going to church when I read him; imagine if I could read it in the original.

Each song [Desaparecidos] has a seed that it came from. We're trying to take that and broaden it out and make it resonate with people.

People resist change; if they like something, then they want you to keep doing it over and over - but I think if you like what a particular band or artist does, then you should want to see what they're going to do next.

I think that hip-hop is more of an individual effort. That means you're an artist from the streets, they expect you to rap about the streets, because that's what happens there.

I have on many occasions spoken my mind from stage. I have offered organizations table space by the merch booth. I have donated a dollar-a-ticket, or the entire guarantee, to different causes. I have registered voters. I have played on behalf of political candidates.

I think that, with anything creative, you should have the freedom to experiment, and that experimentation means not feeling totally responsible for how other people perceive it.

If there's ever a kid out there that can't afford to buy the music, I still want them to hear it, and hopefully they'll go to the show, or buy a T-shirt from the band. That's the idea.

I've thought about the idea of, 'Can happiness and creativity co-exist?' So much of what I've done, I think, has been based on being dissatisfied or incomplete or lonely. The answer is, 'There isn't an answer, necessarily.'

If you love something, give it away.

I never camped as a kid, but I really got into camping and sleeping outdoors. I've also done some amazing river floats in New Mexico and Idaho. It's peaceful and awesome.

There's all body types, but there's just one size.

Rastafarianism and reggae music have always kind of resonated with me. Those ideas of redemption, liberation and overcoming oppression through music, weed and community. Fighting evil through love and music, I think it's just a really powerful idea.

We [ the Desaparecidos ] are perfectly prepared for people to hate what we're saying or not like what we're saying.