Sufjan Stevens Quotes
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Life is all about toiling and labor. But obviously I get great joy in confronting challenge and taking risk.
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I'm being explicit about really horrifying experiences in my life, but my hope has always been to be responsible as an artist and to avoid indulging in my misery, or to come off as an exhibitionist. I don't want to make the listener complicit in my vulnerable prose poem of depression, I just want to honor the experience. I'm not the victim here, and I'm not seeking other peoples' sympathy. I don't blame my parents, they did the best they could.
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One of my strongest memories is my father playing bongos in the living room in Detroit listening to Motown radio. He was this skinny white bald guy, but he was really moved by blues and Motown and funk.
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Public school felt like prison - cinderblock walls, fluorescent lights, metal lockers. It was so sterile and unstimulating.
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We stayed a long, long time, to see you, to meet you, to see you at last.
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Pro Tools is an incredible resource. I think it's enabled me to do things that I wouldn't have been able to do without this kind of computer editing.
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The Internet is just one big gossip chamber - that's why it's so fascinating and entertaining. It's a fabulous platform for superficial communication.
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Yes, the kingdom of Christianity and the Church has been one of the most destructive forces in history, and there are levels of bastardization of religious beliefs. But the unique thing about Christianity is that it is so amorphous and not reductive to culture or place or anything. It's extremely malleable.
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I think that music has always been restricted to media. The LP is an antiquated form, and the CD is now an antiquated form, and there's no sense grieving. Music is forever, there will always be songs. It's exciting that we're not limited to the media any more. I don't hold a precious view of my work, that it exists outside of social constructs or the confines of a platform.
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We live in a world that is cruel to the earth itself. Man is a biological terrorist.
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Art is... a reflection of a greater divine creation. There really is no separation.
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There's a sense of urgency in understanding that your body is not really your own. We can control it to a certain extent through habits and good behavior, but there's so much we don't have control of.
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I'm from the generation that's always been recording, from the very beginning. I learned to play the guitar on the four-track. I started listening to music at a time when people were doing recording at home, when the discussion about songwriting correlated to the discussion about producing and engineering. I think that's a description of my generation.
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I'm a very self-conscious person, I think we all are, but I'm especially not very comfortable in my body. I always feel really weird and awkward on the street or on the stage. It has nothing to do with circumstances, it's just an ongoing psychological state, like white noise.
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I'm always hearing music in terms of what I can take out of it, and I think I've always listened like that. I have a hard time just listening for pleasure. I'm much less about instinct, and more of a utilitarian listener.
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The round-up is an aggressive tradition. I'm trying to objectively be a steward of the tradition and what it means in its choreography.
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When I live, I'll give it all I've got.