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 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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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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I know a lot of artists say this, but it's hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There's no tricks.
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We should find inspiration in the senses that already exist and try to copy them and apply them to us. If we compare our senses to the senses of other animals and species that we don't have, we can get ideas for new abilities that we can adapt to humans by applying cybernetics to the body.
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Great things that can happen when you're doing a movie.
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We're going to have another rude awakening, a war or depression where people are going to have to value one another again and not value money and winning alone. On the political environment we now have a President who likes winning and money and he represents aspects of the spectacle we were alluding to, and yet he's my President and I am for anyone who is my President. I'm an American and yet it's the style thing. We’ll see what happens. He’d like to see things work well and trying to get us to that place as a country.
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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.
