Conor Oberst Quotes

I think there's just so many people in the world that don't feel understood, and when you hear a song and you go, 'Oh, that song understands me,' that's an amazing feeling. I get it when I listen to the radio... That's a beautiful part of music.

Some of us get a feeling when we hear music and we feel music, and you want to figure out how to continue to feel that.

With so many ways to communicate at our disposal, we must not forget the transformative power of a live music experience and genuine human exchange.

I love knowing that people are connecting to my lyrics, my music and me.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

So much of listening to lyrically driven music is projecting your own feelings and experiences into the music.

I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.

It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of.

Music has always carried me through times of loneliness. So when I make music, I like it to make people who listen to it feel like they have a friend who reveals something personal to them, rather than trying to be like a god up on a pedestal

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone - a memory.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

People will come up to me at shows and tell me that a song touched them in a completely different way than I wrote it. That's fun. Fans translating it in their own way.

I stumbled into soul music at a very young age. It had something that really spoke to me.

Stories can encourage us and embolden us to face ourselves and to feel. Stories can make us feel less alone. If we're reading a story that moves us, we can feel that emotion that I feel towards my father or mother or girlfriend. So they can give us late-night company.

I don't go to shows because I just want to listen to the music performed live. I want to get to know the person who's performing it. Or I want to, like, take away a sense that I had an experience that nobody else is going to have again, or a unique experience for that moment.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

How we absorb music is unique. I know what I do. When I'm listening to music, I tend to find myself in a song. That's what really makes you connect is if you feel what that song is saying.

I'm the type of artist who touches people, that's the type of artist that I am.

I've always felt that music should be a normal part of the experience that surrounds people.

I think you really have to remember what you loved about making music in the first place. Ultimately, people can be like, 'We've seen this dude in many movies,' but if they hear a song and they're feeling it, they can look past all the personal things and not hold it against you that you're also an actor.

With most of the songs and music that I've composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral.

What we have to get clear to kids is that when you offer your stillness and open yourself to the experience of music, it pays you back more than you give.

I'm a huge stadium rock fan, but I'm also a fan of everything from Massive Attack to Peter Gabriel, U2, the Police, Radiohead, and Coldplay. I've realized that I love all forms of music and get excited when any artist goes crazy and creates something that is an experience.

As a musician, you never understand why people connect with certain songs.

I just want to make art that connects with people and moves them on an emotional level. Any time I can put out music and place a story behind it and have people watch it and go, 'Wow, I was affected by that,' to me, feels like I've done my job.