Sufjan Stevens Quotes

I try to put all I am as a person into what I do. My intelligence, my emotion. I've done that in everything.

If you are writing something in which you are really involved, you don't even need to think about it any longer. The situation itself demands your total commitment as an individual, just as in your political commitments.

I'm not striving for happiness, I'm trying to get some work done. And sometimes the best work is done under doubt. Constantly rethinking and re-evaluating what you're doing, working and working until it's finished.

Our father taught us such a work ethic that if there's something worth doing, it's worth doing well.

I feel a big obligation to the audience, almost in a moral sense, to say something useful. If I'm going to spend a year of my life on these things, I want something that I feel that strongly about.

If I'm going to do something, I'm going to spend however long it takes to get it right.

I'm not great at multi-tasking, so when I do one thing... I like to do it 100%.

I went backwards and forwards over it until I was 22. And then in the past few years I began to say to myself, OK, look, I'm not messing around. This is something I want to attack, instead of thinking, I'll just see what happens with it.

As an athlete, success is not just about winning; it is about working hard and giving it all you have. I have always taken one match at a time and worked hard; when I succeeded, I worked further on the aspects of the game which worked for me; when I failed, I listed out my weaknesses and worked on them.

Whatever you do, don't take shortcuts. It's great advice to take and live by.

We said we would leave no stone unturned to get to Germany and now we are applying the same philosophy towards our tournament preparations.

No matter what anybody thinks about any of them, every record I've done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy.

I love thinking about the film, the project and committing myself as much as possible.

I'm choosy to a fault. You want to hold out for a project that means something. You're the one who's there working fifteen hours a day, and if you don't believe in it, it can feel a whole lot longer.

I have an intensive relationship with the thing that I'm working on, and I hope that comes through. It's better for me to not worry about the things I can't fix once they're done.

When I look back on what I've done, I think I'm drawn to obsession, perhaps.

I get up in the morning and get to bed at night, and between, I bring equivalent dedication to everything I do, with a horror of the inaccurate and the half-baked.

I never really thought of myself as a captain. I always thought of myself as a guy trying to win games, a guy who could look back and have no regrets.

Everything I involve myself with is an extension of me, so I take everything super seriously, from the music to the shows. That's the only way to do it.

If I'm going to do something, I'll do it properly or not at all.

Anything that I've put my name to and my face to and put my time into, is something that I'm clearly passionate about, or I wouldn't be there.

[Directing first film:] I was terrified, it was really very scary because there is a lot of responsibility. I think I was terrified because I wanted it to work so much. A lot of actors direct movies but I thought the stakes were kind of higher for me because I really, really cared. [...] I just worked as hard as I possibly could on every single thing, every single day. I said that if this failed it would not be because I didn't work as hard as I possibly could...every day.

What did you try hard at today?

I take my job seriously, which means I'm going to need to get acquainted with the subject matter on a personal level.

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.