Conor Oberst

“The only thing major labels can really offer is money.”

“I've given up trying to understand what people think about me. It seems like a lot of people don't like the music we make and don't know me, or something.”

“I really just want to be warm yellow light that pours over everyone I love.”

“I have a car in Nebraska. When I bought it, they gave me a satellite radio, and there's an 'indie-rock' station. It's just nothing I'm interested in.”

“Joe Arpaio needs no help from me getting attention. For years he has been a beacon of bigotry and intolerance for all the world to see. The list of human and civil-rights abuses he's committed in Maricopa County is long and well documented.”

“My family is Catholic. I went to a Catholic school, that kind of thing, so that was my childhood for sure.”

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

“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.”

“Life is always surprising to me. When you think it's going to get dull, it never really does.”

“If you think about the concept of reincarnation, it's essentially uploading yourself and your spirit into a new form, a new hard drive as it were.”

“Art is essentially communication. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. That's why people make art, so other people can relate to it.”

“I think in a lot of ways unconditional love is a myth. My mom's the only reason I know it's a real thing.”

“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 was raised Catholic, and I have an aversion to anyone who takes religion to the extreme.”

“I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie.”

“In many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio; we build the songs that way.”

“The worst thing you can do as an artist is to repeat yourself.”

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

“The best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.”

“I've cried, and you'd think I'd be better for it, but the sadness just sleeps, and it stays in my spine the rest of my life.”