Conor Oberst Quotes

When you're making music, you're creeping up on your heart and pouring it out into something.

For me, writing isn't a way of being public or private; it's just a way of being. The process is always full of pain, but I like that. It's a reality, and I just accept it as something not to be avoided.

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.

Music - not just the lyrics, but the music itself - expresses confused or illicit passions: rage, lust, envy, frustration, channeling these energies and creating an outlet for them.

When I started learning the cello, I fell in love with the instrument because it seemed like a voice - my voice.

You cannot just scream and yell unless you feel it in your whole body.

The one thing that kept our family together was the music. The only thing that our family would share emotionally was to have our dad cry over something the kids did with music.

Once I discovered music and that you don't need to just use words but can add a growl to the melody, that releases so much more. I never want to make music for any other reason.

Music makes me cry.

This is one of the major purposes of soul and jazz music; to state what you feel.

The power of music is a wonderful thing. It can make us happy, make us cry. It can make us forget and make us remember.

People are like, 'Why are you playing that five-neck guitar?' I want to hurt. I want to play.

I think when a musician loses their inhibition and dives deep into their soul, that's a prayer. It's so powerful that you will touch people whether it's good or bad.

I think when people listen to music, they can truly feel authenticity. For me personally, as a listener, there's certain songs where I'm just like, 'Man, I know that person was really feeling that.'

I don't try to please when I play. I try to cure.

I've always been shy, but every time that I sing or I perform, when music comes out of me, it is the only thing I can relate to, it's the only thing I can give.

The reason you write [songs] is because there's something you want to say that is important to you - enough to go through all the torture of writing.

By means of music the very passions, enjoy themselves.

How could anybody think of Bach as 'cold' when these [cello] suites seem to shine with the most glittering kind of poetry," Casals said. "As I got on with the study I discovered a new world of space and beauty... the feelings I experienced were among the purest and most intense in my artistic life!

I still perform because it's a necessity for my innards. And those songs, some of those songs, I have sung, I don't know how many thousands of times. And I promise you, every single solitary night, they're new to me. They are brand-new to me that night.

It feels good to play a little music / Tears running down my face 'cause I love to do it

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

What feeling feels like over time. An attempt to screw up what feeling feels like over time. Heartbreak and a high C.... The often welcome melodic lie.... The soul's undersong. The orchestration of randomness, a flirtation with the boundaries of silence and space.... a reminder that the self wants to disappear, be taken away from itself and returned.

I play until my fingers are blue and stiff from the cold, and then I keep on playing. Until I'm lost in the music. Until I am the music--notes and chords, the melody and harmony. It hurts, but it's okay because when I'm the music, I'm not me. Not sad. Not afraid. Not desperate. Not guilty.

I've always had a flare for the dramatic. I thought about being an actor and I thought about directing, but writing truly became something I needed to do, just to stay sane. It's my over-pressure valve.