Conor Oberst Quotes
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Since the songs were written over a five-year period, I think these are little snapshots. Some people call it political or topical, but I think each song is self-contained. I think it fits together as a picture of the last half-decade of time.
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I’m always fascinated when people really fervently believe, because I have such a hard time believing anything. When people have real faith in something, it’s fascinating to me. And the fact that so many people, in surveys, so many people say they do. It kind of blows my mind.
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The idea of forever is kind of ridiculous, which is unfortunate because its kind of a nice thing to say, you know. I think it softens the blow of mortality and having to say goodbye to everything you know and everyone you love and all that kind of thing.
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Love's an excuse to get hurt.
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I think it is more like a ghostthat has been following us both.Something vague that we're not seeing,something more like a feeling.
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Men with purple hearts carry silver guns and they will kill a man for what his father has done. But what my father did, I don't live it: no, I am not him.
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And your eyes must do some raining if you're ever gonna grow / When crying don't help, you can't compose yourself / It's best to compose a poem, an honest verse of longing / Or a simple song of hope.
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I find that moving keeps me optimistic, the idea of what's going to be down the road a bit or around the next bend.
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In a way, to have whatever people talk about as "crossover success," I think it means you start making bad music. I mean, when I'm flipping through the channels and see the VMAs or something, I don't really see any music there.
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I try not to think about the idea of reaching more and more people, because once you get in that mindset, I think you lose the point of why you're doing it in the first place. Still, the best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.
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I kind of go in waves with reading. Sometimes I read all the time, and sometimes I can't get settled enough to focus.
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There's a very fine line between one person's reality and another person's fantasy.
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The way my life's structured, I don't stay in a place for more than a couple months.
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Desaparecidos try to be the opposite of apathetic. There are so many young people in America that are apathetic.
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When you look at what people consider success in the music industry, it's just terrible music.
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We, the Desaparecidos, are perfectly prepared for people to hate what we're saying or not like what we're saying.
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And I never thought this life was possible,You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for. In polaroids you were dressed in women's clothes Were you made ashamed, why'd you lock them in a drawer? Well, I don't think that I ever loved you more Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep And all their tearful words will turn back into steam The sound of loneliness makes me happier.
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When I run into a person or a kid that comes up and gives me the spiel about, 'Hey, I got your record at this time in my life, and it really helped me,' that stuff totally still rings true. If you're standing there talking to someone, it's really easy to tell if they're being authentic or not. And that's great.
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The only thing major labels can really offer is money.
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The one recurring theme in my writing, and in my life in general, is confusion. The fact that anytime you think you really know something, you're going to find out you're wrong - that is the rule. The moments where you think you have something figured out, those are the exceptions.
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Our band is different in the sense that we all are involved with a lot of different projects. It's hard to say when we'll record again, but we're not calling it quits right away.
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Every time I finish a song... most of the time it's in my own head, like this sounds too much like a Townes Van Zandt song, or whoever. I realize there are so many melodies and chord progressions in pop and rock music that are so similar that you can kind of trace it back to other things. Most of the time it's just in your head.
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My favorite rhymes are sort of half-rhymes where you might just get the vowel sound the same, but it's not really a true rhyme. That gives you far more flexibility to capture the feeling you're trying to express. But sometimes it's best not to have any rhyme.
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I want to be enriched by the music I listen to. That's the reason it never really exists in the mainstream. Because that's not what most people are after.