Top 232 Quotes & Sayings by Conor Oberst - Page 4

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

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.

I wanna be your happiness. I wanna be your common sense pain.

I believe that vinyl will outlast CDs. There's no reason for it, but it stays around because there are still people that want them.

Rock and roll seems to have had a mellowing in the business where it got harder to sell individual records and make money doing that.

And I never thought this life was possible,You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for. In polaroids you were dressed in women's clothes Were you made ashamed, why'd you lock them in a drawer? Well, I don't think that I ever loved you more Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep And all their tearful words will turn back into steam The sound of loneliness makes me happier.

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

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.

In a way, to have whatever people talk about as "crossover success," I think it means you start making bad music. I mean, when I'm flipping through the channels and see the VMAs or something, I don't really see any music there.

I'm kind of like, "never say never."

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!

Music becomes very personal. When you marry a message you want to send out into the world with good music, all of a sudden you have a very potent way of delivering your message.

Well morning came, and it dressed the sky in a lovely yellow gown. Shopping malls are opening in that narrow hallway of downtown, filled with people who are shopping for their lovers and their friends, singing "I won't ever be lonely again

I think different musical collaborators bring out different qualities in my songs and I like that.

My head's a carousel of pictures and The spinning never stops.

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.

I'm ripe for the picking for the Scientologists - one of those creeps. Someone's got to find me. Some little weird cult can just pluck me up, because I'm ripe for the picking.

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).

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.

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.

A lot of the mythology that sprung up around Haile Selassie, it's not like something he asked for, having people deify him. That's pretty heavy. I don't know what you do in that situation.

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.

You could be happy, the minute you try. Why won't you try? Oh won't you try?

I liked the idea of having a record that's reggae-influenced but not musically, just lyrically. 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. Which I suppose is at the root of most any religion. You're gonna find it, if taken in the right context.

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

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.

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.

My Brother went to college To become a doctor And if he studies hard enough He'll end up just like papa, who hates his life.

Popular music is all about traveling at the speed of you and elevating the individual as the highest thing in the world.

I mean, you just go down the line, and with any of these issues, it's about rich people staying rich. And using poverty as a weapon against people. That's what we see every day. And I'm not an economist, so I can't speak to the nuances of it, but just common sense tells me the whole thing is corrupt.

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.

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

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.

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.

We're going to sing about things that matter to us. The balancing act is to present these ideas but also make the music exciting and sort of fun enough that even if you're not paying attention to the lyrics, you might still like the songs anyway. That's the idea.

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.

A kid that picks up a record, he doesn't need to know anything other than the music and have it in his or her headphones. They're getting ideas directly, it's like someone whispering in their ear. That's such a personal way to receive information.

It's hard to get people to focus on one idea.

I find that life is easier when it is just a blur With no details to confuse who or what or where I was So when the ending comes the full regret will be obscure

I love story songs. It's just, for me, they're harder to write, and sometimes they sound too intended or something.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I think that obviously the quest for purpose, or meaning, or understanding to existence is something that I always think about, always deal with. I guess everybody does - that existential crisis of human condition. It's nothing new. But I'd love to come across something that really made me believe in something.

I've given up trying to understand what people think about me.

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.

I think there's a weird self-affirmation thing that happens in popular music in general. It seems like every song I hear on the radio is like, "Listen to me roar!" or "This is my fight song!"

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.

There was this book I read and loved, The story of a ship Who sailed around the world and found That nothing else exists Beyond its own two sails And wooden shell And what is held within. All else is sure to pass. We clutch and grasp And debate what's truly permanent.