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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

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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
Helping
Feelings
Self
Absorbed
Feels
Privileged
Life
Musician
Conscious
Feeling
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More quotes by Sufjan Stevens

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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
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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
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Fiction has always been a thorn in my side, because I've always wanted to be a writer but I can't seem to really do it.
Sufjan Stevens
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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
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I like residing in abstraction.
Sufjan Stevens
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I think musicians should stay off television generally.
Sufjan Stevens
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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
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My siblings and I were raised like tenants, to be honest. There was a total absence of intimacy in my family, though there was still a great deal of camaraderie among the kids. Things were set up almost like a business, and it had to be managed that way because we were really poor, and there were a lot of mouths to feed.
Sufjan Stevens
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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
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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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We live in community, and we're created in community. We're created out of the unity of two people, and then we're made into a family. It's just inherent in who we are.
Sufjan Stevens
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Pro Tools is an incredible resource. I think it's enabled me to do things that I wouldn't have been able to do without this kind of computer editing.
Sufjan Stevens
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There's a sense of urgency in understanding that your body is not really your own. We can control it to a certain extent through habits and good behavior, but there's so much we don't have control of.
Sufjan Stevens
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We stayed a long, long time, to see you, to meet you, to see you at last.
Sufjan Stevens
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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
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Art is... a reflection of a greater divine creation. There really is no separation.
Sufjan Stevens
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Tuesday night at the Bible study we lift our hands and pray over your body, but nothing ever happens.
Sufjan Stevens
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My music is just about story telling. I don't have much to say, and I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm just singing through conviction about what I love and what I care about, starting with the very small.
Sufjan Stevens
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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
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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