Top 232 Quotes & Sayings by Conor Oberst
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Conor Oberst.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
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.
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.
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.
Screaming is bad for the voice, but it's good for the heart.
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.
Art is essentially communication. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. That's why people make art, so other people can relate to it.
They say it's better to bury your sadness in a graveyard or garden that waits for the spring to wake from its sleep and burst into green.
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul.
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.
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.
Love's an excuse to get hurt.
Sometimes I daydream about having a farm and a wife and some babies and watching the grass grow, but you have to meet the right person for that.
I would prefer to be a little nervous, because when you stop being nervous is kind of when you stop caring.
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.
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.
Why are you scared to dream of god when it's salvation that you want?
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.
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.
I believe that vinyl will outlast CDs.
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.
Pronouns really don't matter in a song - 'I' or 'he' or 'she' or even subscribing a lyric to an inanimate object.
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.
When I was younger, I was somewhat of an idealist. I guess I'm a little bit more of a realist now. I think there's a lot that can be done to make the world a better place, but it's more about choosing your battles.
I've cried, and you'd think I'd be better for it, but the sadness just sleeps, and it stays in my spine the rest of my life.
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.
When everything is lonely I can be my best friend.
I enjoy recording and performing, but it's the songwriting that I love most.
There's a very fine line between one person's reality and another person's fantasy.
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.
Considering our history, I can think of nothing more American than an immigrant.
If the world could remain within a frame like a painting on the wall, I think we'd see the beauty then and stand staring in awe.
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 like to feel the burn of the audience's eyes when I'm whispering all my darkest secrets into the microphone.
There's a major underlying idea as you grow up that you need to just save your money and get that affordable housing at the edge of town where you're away from the city where all the crime happens or whatever.
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.'
When I run into a person or a kid that comes up and gives me the spiel about, 'Hey, I got your record at this time in my life, and it really helped me,' that stuff totally still rings true. If you're standing there talking to someone, it's really easy to tell if they're being authentic or not. And that's great.
I always embrace the worst-case scenario.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When you look at what people consider success in the music industry, it's just terrible music.
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.
There's a lot of optimism in changing scenery, in seeing what's down the road.
A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike.
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.
There's all body types, but there's just one size.
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.
No lies, just love.
I'm a real music fan, so I listen to all kinds of music all the time. I listen to a lot of what my friends or people I know are listening to. I'm always checking out new bands.
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.
Let the poets cry themselves to sleep, and all their tearful words will turn back into steam.
I think in a lot of ways unconditional love is a myth. My mom's the only reason I know it's a real thing.
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 really just want to be warm yellow light that pours over everyone I love.
Once you realize that everyone is in the same boat, that everyone is just as insecure and childlike as everyone else, that all these jokers in D.C. ruining our world are just greedy kids grabbing for marbles - I think that realization means you're an adult.
The way my life's structured, I don't stay in a place for more than a couple months.
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 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.
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