Sufjan Stevens Quotes

To find freedom and happiness in each others' arms, or you know, inside their own bodies and minds. That is a very empowering thing in a society that's trying to control us all the time.

We're always attracted to characters who are people we could identify with and yet are put through incredibly tortured or difficult circumstances - the idea being that you don't really know who you are until you've been tested or suffered in some way.

I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I'd languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps.

I am not a communist first and an individualist second. I am an individualist first, and I don't mean this in the shallow, purely egotistical sense of self-interest and everyone else be damned. I mean this in the true sense of enlightenment, recovery of personality, and the full development of personality.

I don’t want to stand before you like a thing, shrewd, secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action. And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to unfold. I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.\

We are stronger than we've credited ourselves to be. We have been the victims and the witnesses. We have said a lifetime of good-byes.

You must accept the fact that there is no help but self-help. I cannot tell you how to gain freedom since freedom exists within you.

My cancer allowed me to explore who I really was. Now I feel like a woman who's able to handle whatever life has dealt her.

At which point should we let go and do what we want to do, and when should we submit to rules? Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.

When you finally understand who you are, ages 6 through 60 will understand who you are. Because when they see a person that's come through all that I've come through, still standing, it's amazing.

Don't let your wounds make you become someone you're not.

For me, a happy ending is not everything works out just right and there is a big bow, it's more coming to a place where a person has a clear vision of his or her own life in a way that enables them to kind of throw down their crutches and walk.

I'm still me even after all that's happened.

There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes a confident duck able to take charge of her own life and problems.

I learned patience, perseverance, and dedication. Now I really know myself, and I know my voice. It's a voice of pain and victory.

But my experience is that people who have been through painful, difficult times are filled with compassion.

What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.

The best thing we can do is develop our own.

Claiming your life for yourself feels like a huge deal until you do it.