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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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.'
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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 realize I have strength as an artist and professional by embracing my difference instead of what makes me the same.
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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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I was free when I was 12 because I got my first skateboard. I've been free ever since.
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David Bowie and Boy George created a safely contained theatrical expression of gay style.
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I can't understand why anyone would want to live the life of a politician if you can't say pretty much what you think. You are not in it for the money: there's unremitting pressure on your life, you give up so much of your privacy. It can only be because of the things you want to do and the things you want to say.
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Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.'
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Good taste has everything to do with being cultured and being refined, and if art has to do with anything, it has to do with being human.
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Real success means creating a life of meaning through service that fulfills your reason for being here.
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Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.
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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.
