Quotes from Conor Oberst

I'm proud that with 'Bright Eyes' we've always experimented and tried to make a different record every time out.

Why are you scared to dream of god when it's salvation that you want?

If there's ever a kid out there that can't afford to buy the music, I still want them to hear it, and hopefully they'll go to the show, or buy a T-shirt from the band. That's the idea.

I believe that vinyl will outlast CDs. There's no reason for it, but it stays around because there are still people that want them.

Music becomes very personal. When you marry a message you want to send out into the world with good music, all of a sudden you have a very potent way of delivering your message.

I have a terrible memory in general, but one thing I've always been able to remember is my songs.

I have many friends who are both Mexican and Mexican-American and others who, I guess you would say, are somewhere in between. The ironic thing is that all three of those categories often exist inside of the same family.

Let the poets cry themselves to sleep, and all their tearful words will turn back into steam.

It's glorious to be able to go onto the Internet and hear any kind of music anywhere, from anywhere, and get it instantly. But there's also something glorious about having a record with a sleeve and looking at the artwork, putting it on the turntable and playing it, there's still something romantic to me about that.

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.

I don't really premeditate what I write my songs about; you know, they just kind of happen, and I can't start writing songs to please a certain group of people or propagate a certain message all the time. That's just not how my songwriting works - it just sort of comes out, and the songs are what they are.

I enjoy recording and performing, but it's the songwriting that I love most.

We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul.

I've been part of running a label since I was a kid, so I understand how it works. But the more and more I learn about it, the less and less interested I am in it.

There's all body types, but there's just one size.

we made love on the living room floor with the noise in the background of a televised war and in that defeaning pleasure i thought i heard someone say if we walk away they'll walk away

On every Bright Eyes record, there's some kind of sound collage that begins it. Some of them have dialogue, some don't. I like it because it can kind of slow down the attention span a bit. It's a way to draw you in to the rest of the record.

The first music I ever got into was the '80s alternative bands that my brother listened to, like The Cure and The Smiths and R.E.M. and Fugazi. I can remember specifically saying The Cure was my favorite band back in second grade.

It seems like everything I do musically I tend to lose a few fans and gain a few fans, and it all kind of evens out.

There's a major underlying idea as you grow up that you need to just save your money and get that affordable housing at the edge of town where you're away from the city where all the crime happens or whatever.

I'll never understand how destroying families through deportation benefits our society. How we treat the undocumented says a great deal about us as a people and whether or not we'll continue to fulfill the fundamental American promise of equality and opportunity for all.

You can only really understand good if you have bad, so the idea of heaven or anything that happens for eternity, even if it's nice, I can't imagine it being nice forever. Even the idea of forever is kind of ridiculous, which is unfortunate because it's kind of a nice thing to say, you know.

I really believe in the way the energy can consolidate in certain geographical spots. You can find it in a lot of different places, beautiful natural spots, or if you look at Islam or Judaism or Christianity, these ideas of holy places.

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.