Sufjan Stevens Quotes

I live my life pretty emotionally, for better and for worse. I'm pretty thin-skinned and transparent. I lead with my heart, and I wanted to make a movie that did the same.

My career is based off of me talking about my emotions.

My story is just my story, and it's not nearly as traumatic as some.

I've never really been afraid of how people were going to define me, as long as I didn't write some cheaper song because people like that I'm depressed.

Life has to keep going, so you can either be a victim the rest of your life and let it drag you down into drugs and alcohol and depression or you can turn it into something good, fun even, you know, and I tell young people who are going through depression that this might be the most important time of your life. This might be what makes you a great artist later on.

In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.

INTROVERTS are especially vulnerable to challenges like marital tension, a parent’s death, or abuse. They’re more likely than their peers to react to these events with depression, anxiety, and shyness. Indeed, about a quarter of Kagan’s high-reactive kids suffer from some degree of the condition known as “social anxiety disorder,” a chronic and disabling form of shyness.

It's hard to talk about childhood trauma. It's hard to talk about depression. It's hard to talk about anxiety. And we thought - I wonder if we just open up our subconscious and the things that we think about and hide from people every day and just let them come out in some of these lyrics.

I just want people to know it's OK to really feel their feelings.

In order to be a good emergency contact, you need a lot of friend-patience and empathy. Often, this comes from personal experience with anxiety, trauma, and depression.

I've never been a confessional writer.

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.

At times it is not easy for me to take up living again.

If something happens to me, you're going to hear about it. I only know how to write songs about my life.

Vulnerability can be empowering as a songwriter and storyteller.

But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes.

Anxiety is loves greatest killer.

We write out of our humanity by writing through our direct experience. That which is most personal is most general, which becomes both our insight and protection as a writers. This is our authority as women, as human beings.

I want to be remembered as an artist that gave you a piece of me, as opposed to some surface bullshit. I just want to be remembered as a poet that was open and honest because I wake up every morning and I'm me.

As a writer, if you're prepared to work from your own wound, you're allowing people into the most vulnerable parts of yourself.

And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.

Sharing our depressions felt like having survived a war. The experience bonds you to the other person for life.

You may feel depressed, but it can't be so depressing that you can't move. No, I would say that people create in moments when they are elated about expressing their depression!

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

Sometimes when we get our ass kicked and we're down, sometimes we stay down, and sometimes we get depressed and sometimes we don't know how to handle it, and sometimes we don't know what's going on, and sometimes we feel like it's not worth going on.