Top 100 Conor Oberst Quotes
#1. 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.
Conor Oberst
#2. 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!
Conor Oberst
#3. Joe Arpaio needs no help from me getting attention. For years he has been a beacon of bigotry and intolerance for all the world to see. The list of human and civil-rights abuses he's committed in Maricopa County is long and well documented.
Conor Oberst
#4. The worst thing you can do as an artist is to repeat yourself.
Conor Oberst
#5. With science and reason throughout history, what people believed turned out to be false. So I like to keep an open mind to all perspectives and learn and become more fully realised as a person. I just feel we're never going to know what the full picture is.
Conor Oberst
#6. 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.
Conor Oberst
#7. My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade.
Conor Oberst
#8. 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.
Conor Oberst
#9. I swear that I'm dying slowly but it's happening, and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere ... just take me there.
Conor Oberst
#10. I didn't used to think about politics much, or social issues. I was a teenager, writing about girls.
Conor Oberst
#11. For a sunrise or a sunset, you're manic or you're depressed. Will you ever feel ok?
Conor Oberst
#12. I try to make all my songs good. I don't ever write one to finish one. A lot of protest songs end up that way, driven by some kind of emotional response.
Conor Oberst
#13. 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.'
Conor Oberst
#14. I think there's a danger, for me at least, in retreating and going inward and depression. I have to stay diligent against that tendency.
Conor Oberst
#15. I was raised Catholic, and I have an aversion to anyone who takes religion to the extreme.
Conor Oberst
#16. I think we should be pushing for amnesty and a path to citizenship for every undocumented person residing in the United States who has not committed a violent crime, with a special emphasis on keeping families together.
Conor Oberst
#17. I wanna be your happiness. I wanna be your common sense pain.
Conor Oberst
#18. Everything must belong somewhere. I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.
Conor Oberst
#19. 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.
Conor Oberst
#20. Cause a costume can be comfortable It can make you feel more beautiful It can even make you look like someone else But it's still you, so there's nothing you can do Like a bad habit, the one you couldn't kick, there it always is And it's nothing that no doctor's gonna fix.
Conor Oberst
#21. We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul.
Conor Oberst
#22. And the sad act like lepers They stick to the shadows They long to ring bells of warning To tell of their coming So that the pure can shut their doors.
Conor Oberst
#23. I'm always fascinated when people really fervently believe, because I have such a hard time believing anything. When people have real faith in something, it's fascinating to me. And the fact that so many people, in surveys, so many people say they do. It kind of blows my mind.
Conor Oberst
#24. Now I believe that lovers should be draped in flowers and laid entwined together on a bed of clover and left there to sleep, left there to dream of their happiness.
Conor Oberst
#25. It's hard to get people to focus on one idea.
Conor Oberst
#26. Little soldier, little insect You know war it has no heart It will kill you in the sunshine Or happily in the the dark Where kindness is a card game Or a bent up cigarette In the trenches, in the hard rain With a bullet and a bet.
Conor Oberst
#27. I'm proud that with 'Bright Eyes' we've always experimented and tried to make a different record every time out.
Conor Oberst
#29. I'll never understand how destroying families through deportation benefits our society. How we treat the undocumented says a great deal about us as a people and whether or not we'll continue to fulfill the fundamental American promise of equality and opportunity for all.
Conor Oberst
#30. 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.
Conor Oberst
#31. We're all too busy working, entertaining ourselves With forty hours, television and prescription pills Well, I take two a day to help my brain behave It never does, but who's to say? At least my doctor gets paid.
Conor Oberst
#32. I like to feel the burn of the audience's eyes when I'm whispering all my darkest secrets into the microphone.
Conor Oberst
#33. So when your new eyes meet mine they won't see no lies, just love ...
Conor Oberst
#34. Maybe there's a different story when it comes to hip-hop or different genres, but as far as rock music goes, I think there is a sort of fear of saying things people might be apt to criticize. Our band is the opposite of that.
Conor Oberst
#35. I have a terrible memory in general, but one thing I've always been able to remember is my songs.
Conor Oberst
#36. Movement has been one of the few constants in my life, and I always feel a great sense of optimism when I set off to a new place.
Conor Oberst
#37. 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.
Conor Oberst
#38. 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.
Conor Oberst
#39. 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.
Conor Oberst
#40. Pronouns really don't matter in a song - 'I' or 'he' or 'she' or even subscribing a lyric to an inanimate object.
Conor Oberst
#41. I don't feel real confident expressing myself except when I'm writing. I feel kind of scatterbrained. I can see everything from both sides and that makes it hard to reach conclusions. Writing enables me to clarify things.
Conor Oberst
#43. 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.
Conor Oberst
#44. 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.
Conor Oberst
#45. If you think about the concept of reincarnation, it's essentially uploading yourself and your spirit into a new form, a new hard drive as it were.
Conor Oberst
#46. My feeling is that I think writers in general tend to be self-conscious and it takes a bit of a leap of faith or just not giving a sh-t to write something you know people are going to criticize.
Conor Oberst
#48. 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.
Conor Oberst
#49. 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.
Conor Oberst
#50. 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.
Conor Oberst
#51. In a coma, you don't dream, you just hope that someone sits with you.
Conor Oberst
#52. I started to sink like the moon tends to do if you stare at it too long Then you blink and it's gone
Conor Oberst
#53. I have many friends who are both Mexican and Mexican-American and others who, I guess you would say, are somewhere in between. The ironic thing is that all three of those categories often exist inside of the same family.
Conor Oberst
#54. You can't manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There's still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don't have a method that I can go back to - they either come or they don't.
Conor Oberst
#55. I read the newspaper online. Mostly 'The New York Times.' I'll still buy papers if I'm getting on an airplane or the tour bus, though. I like physical things.
Conor Oberst
#56. 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.
Conor Oberst
#57. When I would first come to New York on tour, I hated the place.
Conor Oberst
#58. 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.
Conor Oberst
#59. It's exploding bags, aerosol cans Southbound buses, Peter Pan They left it up to us again I thought you knew the drill It's kill or be killed.
Conor Oberst
#60. You can do a lot to shape the feeling of a song by the way you record it.
Conor Oberst
#61. 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.
Conor Oberst
#62. The only thing major labels can really offer is money.
Conor Oberst
#63. Screaming is bad for the voice, but it's good for the heart.
Conor Oberst
#64. I would prefer to be a little nervous, because when you stop being nervous is kind of when you stop caring.
Conor Oberst
#65. Let the poets cry themselves to sleep, and all their tearful words will turn back into steam.
Conor Oberst
#66. 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.
Conor Oberst
#67. When everything is lonely I can be my best friend.
Conor Oberst
#68. 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.
Conor Oberst
#69. 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.
Conor Oberst
#70. I find that moving keeps me optimistic, the idea of what's going to be down the road a bit or around the next bend.
Conor Oberst
#71. 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.
Conor Oberst
#72. To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.
Conor Oberst
#73. Our band is different in the sense that we all are involved with a lot of different projects. It's hard to say when we'll record again, but we're not calling it quits right away.
Conor Oberst
#74. I want to be enriched by the music I listen to. That's the reason it never really exists in the mainstream. Because that's not what most people are after.
Conor Oberst
#75. 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).
Conor Oberst
#76. 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.
Conor Oberst
#77. I do think that music has a special ability to get behind enemy lines and win hearts and minds.
Conor Oberst
#78. Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt. Do you like to hurt? I do, I do then hurt me.
Conor Oberst
#79. A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike.
Conor Oberst
#80. 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.
Conor Oberst
#81. 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.
Conor Oberst
#82. I enjoy recording and performing, but it's the songwriting that I love most.
Conor Oberst
#83. 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.
Conor Oberst
#85. 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.
Conor Oberst
#86. When you look at what people consider success in the music industry, it's just terrible music.
Conor Oberst
#87. It seems like everything I do musically I tend to lose a few fans and gain a few fans, and it all kind of evens out.
Conor Oberst
#88. I think different musical collaborators bring out different qualities in my songs and I like that.
Conor Oberst
#89. I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.
Conor Oberst
#90. We might die from medication but we sure killed all the pain
Conor Oberst
#91. It's not a movie, no private screening This method acting, well, I call that living
Conor Oberst
#92. 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.
Conor Oberst
#93. And me I'm in the bathroom crying out my eyelids because it's hard to be a man when you're scared, just like a little kid.
Conor Oberst
#94. Everything that happens is supposed to be And it's all pre-determined, can't change your destiny Guess I'll just keep moving, someday maybe I'll get to where I'm going
Conor Oberst
#95. I came upon a doctor who appeared in quite poor health. I said, 'There's nothing that I can do for you that you can't do for yourself.' He said, 'Oh yes you can. Just hold my hand. I think that that would help.' So I sat with him a while then I asked him how he felt. He said, 'I think I'm cured.'
Conor Oberst
#97. I like ideas, but I don't like being preached to.
Conor Oberst
#98. I prefer career artists that have spent time honing their craft, as opposed to, 'I won a karaoke contest on a reality show and now I have a record.' That's such a drag. The music that comes out of it is so poor.
Conor Oberst
#99. One of my favorite modern American authors is Denis Johnson. I'm deeply inspired by all of his work - I rip him off constantly.
Conor Oberst
#100. My family is Catholic. I went to a Catholic school, that kind of thing, so that was my childhood for sure.
Conor Oberst
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