Conor Oberst Quotes

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

I really just want to be warm yellow light that pours over everyone I love.

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 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.

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.

It's not a movie, no private screening This method acting, well, I call that living

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

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 drink to stay warm, and to kill selected memories

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

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.

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.

You should never be embarrassed by your trouble with living, because it's the ones with the sorest throats who have done the most singing.

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.'

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 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 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.

Love's an excuse to get hurt.

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.

Men with purple hearts carry silver guns and they will kill a man for what his father has done. But what my father did, I don't live it: no, I am not him.

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

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

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.

I try not to think about the idea of reaching more and more people, because once you get in that mindset, I think you lose the point of why you're doing it in the first place. Still, the best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.

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 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.

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

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

I don't see any harm in letting whatever comes out come out of you, even if it's sort of weird, or dark, or painful, or too embarrassing, or whatever. I feel like you might as well get it down for yourself. It can't do anything but help you get to where you want to be by recognizing the thoughts that you're having.

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.

It's always the negative things that seep through into your consciousness. Most of the positive things just roll off real fast. I just try not to pay attention to it, because I've never read anything about my band that's accurate.

I've never conceptualized much of what I write about. Maybe, once I'm onto something, I'll conceptualize a finished record. I want the songs to tie together and make sense together. I'm not like, "Oh, I want to explore this idea." That's just not how the creative process works for me. It's more like something strikes me, or finds me, and then I wrestle with it after that. I don't sit back in my armchair, like, "What kind of philosophy can I explore today?"

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.

When everything is lonely I can be my best friend.

We might die from medication but we sure killed all the pain

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

On every Bright Eyes record, there's some kind of sound collage that begins it. Some of them have dialogue, some don't. I like it because it can kind of slow down the attention span a bit. It's a way to draw you in to the rest of the record.

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.

They say they don't know when but a day is gonna come. When there won't be a moon and there won't be a sun. It will just go black. It will just go back to the way it was before.

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.

If you love something, give it away...

I definitely think religion is responsible for a lot of the evils of the world. I mean that's not really in debate. But at the same time, I think whatever gets you through the day, whatever helps you make sense of life I'm not gonna begrudge my grandmother with her rosary beads. It works for them. And at the end of the day, I don't claim to know the answer to anything.

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

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

The idea of forever is kind of ridiculous, which is unfortunate because its 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.

Some days I feel like I'm an atheist. Most days, I feel like an agnostic. On a very rare day, I feel like I'm a believer in something.