Conor Oberst

“When you're 16 or 17, I think like most people that age, the first time you experience certain things in life, whether it's heartbreak or death or love, obviously it's going to seem like a much bigger deal.”

“When I try to explain to people the big influences in my life, or at least when I first started, the most important ones were my friends who were also writing songs and were typically four or five years older than me.”

“If there's a criticism of 'Cassadaga' that I agreed with, it's that we left things in the oven too long, that songs were overstuffed, with too many ideas competing for space.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I prefer career artists that have spent time honing their craft, as opposed to, 'I won a karaoke contest on a reality show and now I have a record.' That's such a drag. The music that comes out of it is so poor.”

“Love's an excuse to get hurt.”

“The idea of forever is kind of ridiculous, which is unfortunate because it's kind of a nice thing to say, you know. I think it softens the blow of mortality and having to say goodbye to everything you know and everyone you love and all that kind of thing.”

“I like to feel the burn of the audience's eyes when I'm whispering all my darkest secrets into the microphone.”

“I try to make all my songs good. I don't ever write one to finish one. A lot of protest songs end up that way, driven by some kind of emotional response.”

“When you look at what people consider success in the music industry, it's just terrible music.”

“Although Omaha is my birthplace and the place I grew up, I don't see myself spending extended amounts of time there. I feel almost more comfortable and more at peace in New York.”

“I think that, with anything creative, you should have the freedom to experiment, and that experimentation means not feeling totally responsible for how other people perceive it.”

“I always embrace the worst-case scenario.”

“I like science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick and Vonnegut, and I really like Margaret Atwood, 'The Handmaid's Tale.' And you know, so much of science fiction has to do with predicting what's to come, so I think that's really interesting.”

“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.”

“With science and reason throughout history, what people believed turned out to be false. So I like to keep an open mind to all perspectives and learn and become more fully realised as a person. I just feel we're never going to know what the full picture is.”

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

“I think we should be pushing for amnesty and a path to citizenship for every undocumented person residing in the United States who has not committed a violent crime, with a special emphasis on keeping families together.”

“If there's a song that stops meaning anything to me, then I'll quit playing it.”