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A musician's attempt to summarize his or her work leads to all this prescriptive chatter, or what I call the Modifier's Madness. A lot of adjectives working overtime.
Sufjan Stevens
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Sufjan Stevens
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: July 1
Banjoist
Composer
Guitarist
Musician
Oboist
Pianist
Record Producer
Saxophonist
Singer-Songwriter
Detroit
Michigan
Call
Summarize
Working
Overtime
Work
Chatter
Adjectives
Attempt
Madness
Leads
Musician
Prescriptive
More quotes by Sufjan Stevens
It's traumatic to meditate on the availability of information through the Internet, or the way we perceive the world as a result. People don't experience things totally or viscerally anymore. It's all through representation, be it a record on YouTube or a post on a blog.
Sufjan Stevens
The World's Fair was the precursor to theme parks like Disneyworld, and the really sort of cheap, superficial promotional architecture that you see everywhere in the US. I think there's a danger when you start creating a civilisation that isn't meant to last.
Sufjan Stevens
My Dad used to say that the balance of the world relied on all of the monks who were living outside of society in creative isolation. I don't quite understand the ascetic life or the private life or the monastic private life. But I definitely understand privacy's value.
Sufjan Stevens
All the time we spent in bed, counting miles before we said, fall in love and fall apart, things will end before they start.
Sufjan Stevens
We stayed a long, long time, to see you, to meet you, to see you at last.
Sufjan Stevens
I've always been obsessed with electronics and using computers and software. It's always been part of my vernacular.
Sufjan Stevens
I'm a very self-conscious person, I think we all are, but I'm especially not very comfortable in my body. I always feel really weird and awkward on the street or on the stage. It has nothing to do with circumstances, it's just an ongoing psychological state, like white noise.
Sufjan Stevens
One of my strongest memories is my father playing bongos in the living room in Detroit listening to Motown radio. He was this skinny white bald guy, but he was really moved by blues and Motown and funk.
Sufjan Stevens
Growing up on the border there, we were always frustrated with people's pronunciations of towns in Michigan, and people mispronouncing Illinois. There are all these Native American words that no one really knows how to pronounce.
Sufjan Stevens
I'm terrified of just being myself because I think it's boring. I know who I really am and I think it's boring.
Sufjan Stevens
I was feeling privileged and self-conscious about my life as a musician, which feels self-absorbed. I can't help it, I am a musician. This is what I do.
Sufjan Stevens
I'm always hearing music in terms of what I can take out of it, and I think I've always listened like that. I have a hard time just listening for pleasure. I'm much less about instinct, and more of a utilitarian listener.
Sufjan Stevens
Public school felt like prison - cinderblock walls, fluorescent lights, metal lockers. It was so sterile and unstimulating.
Sufjan Stevens
The Internet is just one big gossip chamber - that's why it's so fascinating and entertaining. It's a fabulous platform for superficial communication.
Sufjan Stevens
If there's any kind of morality, for me, it's about reality what is reality? I have a hard time distinguishing what is valuable when it comes to the real world and the fantasy world. Like, should I invest my time in the ordinary world or the imaginary world?
Sufjan Stevens
I think of the saddest thing I can and then add a sick dog to that. If I think of a sick dog from the beginning, I just stop there.
Sufjan Stevens
I like residing in abstraction.
Sufjan Stevens
I remember Detroit feeling really unsafe, feeling scared a lot. Our house was broken into, our car was stolen, we had to get a watchdog, we would get beat up in the street, I had my bike stolen. There was just a lot of real anarchy on the streets and sidewalks.
Sufjan Stevens
We live in a world that is cruel to the earth itself. Man is a biological terrorist.
Sufjan Stevens
It's a mystical quality of music, that music isn't really concrete, and it's communicating abstractions about imaginary worlds. At least, my music's like that. It's not real. It's unreal, it's all fabrication. To write a song about Obama would suddenly break the spell.
Sufjan Stevens
