Top 140 Conor Oberst Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Sometimes I worry that I’ve lost the plot My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts I never really dreamed of heaven much Until we put him in the ground. There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free.”

— Conor Oberst

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

— Conor Oberst

53. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

54. “I started to sink like the moon tends to do if you stare at it too long Then you blink and it’s gone.”

— Conor Oberst

55. “If I loved you, well that’s my fault.”

— Conor Oberst

56. “There’s a lot of optimism in changing scenery, in seeing what’s down the road.”

— Conor Oberst

57. “We’ve all seen the power music has to spread messages of solidarity and hope.”

— Conor Oberst

58. “Why are you scared to dream of god when it’s salvation that you want?”

— Conor Oberst

59. “A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike.”

— Conor Oberst

60. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

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

— Conor Oberst

62. “I went right from wunderkind to washed up. Old. Been around too long. That’s just the way I feel. That’s my internal dialogue.”

— Conor Oberst

63. “Everything must belong somewhere. I know that now, that’s why I’m staying here.”

— Conor Oberst

64. “And the sad act like lepers They stick to the shadows They long to ring bells of warning To tell of their coming So that the pure can shut their doors.”

— Conor Oberst

65. “So when your new eyes meet mine they won’t see no lies, just love...”

— Conor Oberst

66. “The idea of forever is kind of ridiculous, which is unfortunate because its 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.”

— Conor Oberst

67. “It’s exploding bags, aerosol cans Southbound buses, Peter Pan They left it up to us again I thought you knew the drill It’s kill or be killed.”

— Conor Oberst

68. “And I sing and sing of awful things The pleasure that my sadness brings.”

— Conor Oberst

69. “It’s always the negative things that seep through into your consciousness. Most of the positive things just roll off real fast. I just try not to pay attention to it, because I’ve never read anything about my band that’s accurate.”

— Conor Oberst

70. “I don’t feel real confident expressing myself except when I’m writing. I feel kind of scatterbrained. I can see everything from both sides and that makes it hard to reach conclusions. Writing enables me to clarify things.”

— Conor Oberst

71. “We’re going to sing about things that matter to us. The balancing act is to present these ideas but also make the music exciting and sort of fun enough that even if you’re not paying attention to the lyrics, you might still like the songs anyway. That’s the idea.”

— Conor Oberst

72. “Rastafarianism and reggae music have always kind of resonated with me. Those ideas of redemption, liberation and overcoming oppression through music, weed and community. Fighting evil through love and music, I think it’s just a really powerful idea.”

— Conor Oberst

73. “And me I’m in the bathroom crying out my eyelids because it’s hard to be a man when you’re scared, just like a little kid.”

— Conor Oberst

74. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

75. “I like the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park. I love how it’s been rained on forever and looks worn down by time.”

— Conor Oberst

76. “One of my favorite modern American authors is Denis Johnson. I’m deeply inspired by all of his work – I rip him off constantly.”

— Conor Oberst

77. “In a way, to have whatever people talk about as “crossover success,” I think it means you start making bad music. I mean, when I’m flipping through the channels and see the VMAs or something, I don’t really see any music there.”

— Conor Oberst

78. “It’s dangerous to buy into praise and criticism for what you do when you’re trying to present your music to people. I don’t ignore it completely, but I don’t dwell on it too much.”

— Conor Oberst

79. “Considering our history, I can think of nothing more American than an immigrant.”

— Conor Oberst

80. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

81. “It’s not a movie, no private screening This method acting, well, I call that living.”

— Conor Oberst

82. “I’m a real music fan, so I listen to all kinds of music all the time. I listen to a lot of what my friends or people I know are listening to. I’m always checking out new bands.”

— Conor Oberst

83. “And in the morning when the sun rise. Look in the water, see the blue sky. As if heaven has been laid there at our feet.”

— Conor Oberst

84. “If I could act like This was my real life, And not some cage where I’ve been placed, Well then, I could tell you The truth like I used to And not be afraid of sounding fake.”

— Conor Oberst

85. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

86. “Now I believe that lovers should be draped in flowers and laid entwined together on a bed of clover and left there to sleep, left there to dream of their happiness.”

— Conor Oberst

87. “For a sunrise or a sunset, you’re manic or you’re depressed. Will you ever feel ok?”

— Conor Oberst

88. “Much of appreciating art or music is really the interpretation of the listener. To a certain extent it’s projection – it’s what people need or lack in themselves that they then put upon these people that they admire.”

— Conor Oberst

89. “There is no Hell when you die so don’t look so worried.”

— Conor Oberst

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

— Conor Oberst

91. “You can’t manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There’s still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don’t have a method that I can go back to – they either come or they don’t.”

— Conor Oberst

92. “To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.”

— Conor Oberst

93. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

94. “I’ve given up trying to understand what people think about me.”

— Conor Oberst

95. “Pronouns really don’t matter in a song – ‘I’ or ‘he’ or ‘she’ or even subscribing a lyric to an inanimate object.”

— Conor Oberst

96. “Since the songs were written over a five-year period, I think these are little snapshots. Some people call it political or topical, but I think each song is self-contained. I think it fits together as a picture of the last half-decade of time.”

— Conor Oberst

97. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

98. “On good days, I can see the inherent goodness in people, and that human beings have a high capacity to learn and adapt. But things like the environment, nuclear weapons and ideas like peak oil – if you think about them too much, they can really freak you out.”

— Conor Oberst

99. “To me, a political song is also a personal song. Most political activism has been driven by empathy for other people and the desire for a world that’s less divisive. Even if songs aren’t overtly political, they can make a listener more empathetic.”

— Conor Oberst

100. “Maybe there’s a different story when it comes to hip-hop or different genres, but as far as rock music goes, I think there is a sort of fear of saying things people might be apt to criticize. Our band is the opposite of that.”

— Conor Oberst