Top 140 Conor Oberst Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I think there’s a danger, for me at least, in retreating and going inward and depression. I have to stay diligent against that tendency.”

— Conor Oberst

102. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

103. “Sometimes I daydream about having a farm and a wife and some babies and watching the grass grow, but you have to meet the right person for that.”

— Conor Oberst

104. “I have on many occasions spoken my mind from stage. I have offered organizations table space by the merch booth. I have donated a dollar-a-ticket, or the entire guarantee, to different causes. I have registered voters. I have played on behalf of political candidates.”

— Conor Oberst

105. “I think our music is more about seeing ourselves in each other and trying to find a more humanistic viewpoint for the world.”

— Conor Oberst

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

— Conor Oberst

107. “And me I’m in my bedroom drawing in my notebook Because my hand thinks I’m an artist But my heart knows I’m a poet It’s just words they mean so little to me.”

— Conor Oberst

108. “When you write a song, the goal is not to convey the details of your life. You should write a memoir or something if that’s what you’re going to do.”

— Conor Oberst

109. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

110. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

111. “I believe that vinyl will outlast CDs.”

— Conor Oberst

112. “I think that hip-hop is more of an individual effort. That means you’re an artist from the streets, they expect you to rap about the streets, because that’s what happens there.”

— Conor Oberst

113. “I find that moving keeps me optimistic, the idea of what’s going to be down the road a bit or around the next bend.”

— Conor Oberst

114. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

115. “I do think that music has a special ability to get behind enemy lines and win hearts and minds.”

— Conor Oberst

116. “I want to be enriched by the music I listen to. That’s the reason it never really exists in the mainstream. Because that’s not what most people are after.”

— Conor Oberst

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

— Conor Oberst

118. “My feeling is that I think writers in general tend to be self-conscious and it takes a bit of a leap of faith or just not giving a sh-t to write something you know people are going to criticize.”

— Conor Oberst

119. “I’m always fascinated when people really fervently believe, because I have such a hard time believing anything. When people have real faith in something, it’s fascinating to me. And the fact that so many people, in surveys, so many people say they do. It kind of blows my mind.”

— Conor Oberst

120. “I’m not the most technically savvy person in the world. Like, I’m not good at troubleshooting when stuff happens to my digital music.”

— Conor Oberst

121. “I think there’s a weird self-affirmation thing that happens in popular music in general. It seems like every song I hear on the radio is like, “Listen to me roar!” or “This is my fight song!””

— Conor Oberst

122. “My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade.”

— Conor Oberst

123. “Hip-hop music has done a very good job of maintaining the political context, where they stand and not giving a sh-t what people think.”

— Conor Oberst

124. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

125. “The way my life’s structured, I don’t stay in a place for more than a couple months.”

— Conor Oberst

126. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

127. “It’s hard to get people to focus on one idea.”

— Conor Oberst

128. “A kid that picks up a record, he doesn’t need to know anything other than the music and have it in his or her headphones. They’re getting ideas directly, it’s like someone whispering in their ear. That’s such a personal way to receive information.”

— Conor Oberst

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

— Conor Oberst

130. “Our band is different in the sense that we all are involved with a lot of different projects. It’s hard to say when we’ll record again, but we’re not calling it quits right away.”

— Conor Oberst

131. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

132. “You could be happy, the minute you try. Why won’t you try? Oh won’t you try?”

— Conor Oberst

133. “I think different musical collaborators bring out different qualities in my songs and I like that.”

— Conor Oberst

134. “Rock and roll seems to have had a mellowing in the business where it got harder to sell individual records and make money doing that.”

— Conor Oberst

135. “As long as I can buy records and books and maybe some clothes, I’m pretty stoked. I don’t need a yacht or anything.”

— Conor Oberst

136. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

137. “They say they don’t know when but a day is gonna come. When there won’t be a moon and there won’t be a sun. It will just go black. It will just go back to the way it was before.”

— Conor Oberst

138. “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.”

— Conor Oberst

139. “The one recurring theme in my writing, and in my life in general, is confusion. The fact that anytime you think you really know something, you’re going to find out you’re wrong – that is the rule. The moments where you think you have something figured out, those are the exceptions.”

— Conor Oberst

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

— Conor Oberst