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
-
I don't think I knew that you could be a novelist. I think a lot of my students are in the same condition. I thought it was unreachable, that it was sort of dead people. It took me a long time - I think I was well into novel writing before I really thought, 'Actually, this is a valid pastime.'
-
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.
-
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.
-
There is an idea of democracy produced by one-sided thinking.
-
It is wonderful to say that your days behind a school desk are over. It's just another phase in your life.
-
Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.
-
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.
-
A smart phone essentially creates a dossier of your travels, and consumers have no control over who will eventually see that information.
-
I'm an actor, and I'm supposed to reflect real people.
-
Don't get me wrong: I would not say no to an Oscar!
-
I realize I have strength as an artist and professional by embracing my difference instead of what makes me the same.
-
I get more upset at losing at other things than chess. I always get upset when I lose at Monopoly.
-
I studied at a grammar school and later at the University of Vienna in the Faculty of Medicine.
-
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.
-
I myself am a parent in a small business. Number of employees: one.
-
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.
-
David Bowie and Boy George created a safely contained theatrical expression of gay style.
-
I never like to be the same, whether it be comedy or drama, funny or serious.
-
For the nation to live, the tribe must die.
-
Grateful to The Kerry Gaynor Method for saving my manager's life. He quit smoking thanks to their genius Method.
-
Even after he was gone, I still loved my father. I looked Norwegian, like him, with a long face, strong jaw, thin mouth, and flashing eyes. And, like him, I was verbal, easygoing, and low-key on the surface, and, deep down, proud, socially paranoid, full of self-loathing, and prone to rage at injustice.
-
I got this Christmas gift with the entire Beatles catalog. I had fun trying to duplicate what I was hearing on these records, only using the instruments I had at hand - an acoustic guitar, and that's all. It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imitate John Lennon and Paul McCartney's harmonies using the guitar.
-
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.
