Sufjan Stevens Quotes
The music is the imperative. It has the upper hand. I think all music, even though it's an abstraction, does motivate a particular meaning. Then it's the job of the musician to honor that meaning and to somehow implement lyrical material that can accommodate that emotional environment.
Quotes to Explore
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In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.
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I never wanted to give up my given name. I'm proud of it, but the only problem was that no one remembered it. It was just a little too awkward, and they mispronounced it so frequently.
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There is an idea of democracy produced by one-sided thinking.
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It is wonderful to say that your days behind a school desk are over. It's just another phase in your life.
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Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.
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In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespeare and taught me how to write. Essays, poetry, critical analysis. Writing is a skill that was painful then but a love of mine now.
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A smart phone essentially creates a dossier of your travels, and consumers have no control over who will eventually see that information.
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I'm an actor, and I'm supposed to reflect real people.
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Don't get me wrong: I would not say no to an Oscar!
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I get more upset at losing at other things than chess. I always get upset when I lose at Monopoly.
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I studied at a grammar school and later at the University of Vienna in the Faculty of Medicine.
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Sense perceptions can be and often are false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses, it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within.
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I myself am a parent in a small business. Number of employees: one.
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The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.
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David Bowie and Boy George created a safely contained theatrical expression of gay style.
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I never like to be the same, whether it be comedy or drama, funny or serious.
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For the nation to live, the tribe must die.
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Working together is the quickest road to marital problems.
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Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
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You get to crack the code of the play. You get to really pick at it and see, 'What is the story that we're telling?' 'What are the clues in the text that I can find that will help inform what story we're telling?' It's almost like a detective mystery.
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Women, they always want you to feel that, y'know, they like it when men cry, they think it's so sensitive. Bullshit. That is a trap. They don't like it. You can cry once when your mother dies. Other than that, keep it to yourself. They know people that cry a lot, they're called their girlfriends, they don't need it from you.
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Cancer didn't change me at all. I know lots of people talk about the life revelation. I didn't have that.
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My fingers traced the melody on an invisible keyboard—my usual way to connect with the music, to feel its emotions on my fingertips. I touched the keys softly, as if gliding my hands through water, but the musical notes kept slipping between my fingers like bubbles, waltzing away in the blue radiance.
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The music is the imperative. It has the upper hand. I think all music, even though it's an abstraction, does motivate a particular meaning. Then it's the job of the musician to honor that meaning and to somehow implement lyrical material that can accommodate that emotional environment.
