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" Musicians are often asked to answer for an entire culture, or for an entire movement. It's a process of commodification. It becomes packaged and summarized in a word like 'emo' or 'grunge'... or 'folk music.' I think that's just language itself, trying to understand the mysteries of the world. "

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" The spiritual ambiguity growing up made me really latch onto a faith - Protestantism - that was somewhat conventional. Everyone else was rebelling against traditions and institutions, whereas I was rebelling against the upheaval and uncertainty in my family. "

Sufjan Stevens

Family

Spiritual

" I don't think it's so hard to be commercial and interesting. Look at Prince, or Neil Young. "

" Pop music is so structured, and I'm excited to try and challenge that in my own work. "

" I have a love/hate relationship with Amy Grant, but I do go back to her Christmas albums once in a while. They're dated and sentimental and the production is nearly unlistenable, but there's something about her vocal performance that just feels really true. I would take her Christmas albums over Mariah Carey's or Destiny's Child's any day. "

" The best fiction is geared towards conflict. We learn most about our characters through tension, when they are put up against insurmountable obstacles. This is true in real life. "

" My anxiety level of my own work and what I'm doing and focusing on my art and all of that stuff? That's fundamental. "

" I think I get a lot of ideas from when I was a kid, listening to Casey Kasem's 'American Top 40.' "

" I love anything by Tchaikovsky. He was the real pop star of his day. "

" Morals, principles and laws are when faith is reduced to standards and those standards basically just bind us, and we become prejudicial, racist, self-serving when we're guided by these laws... When a developed country uses Christianity in its policies, in government, in maintaining corporate wealth, that's a bastardized rendering of a faith. "

" It's hard to say if actual places really affect the way you write. "

" You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I don't think it's art. I just think it's music. It is what it is. "

" I've been trying to challenge myself to be more explicit. I've always liked punk rock and Sonic Youth. I make that music privately, but I've never released it. "

" I was sort of born into a Subud cult that has ties to Islam and Indonesia and Middle Eastern spiritualism. My parents were kind of trial-and-error when it came to religion. "

" I am not naturally inclined to history or geography - maybe that's why I like to sing about it, because it helps me remember. "

" 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. "

" I don't really have a domestic inclination. Even my apartment has a semblance of a storage facility. It's just stacks, there are no bookshelves, just books and piles of stamp collections and weird little sewing and knitting projects. "

" I come from a folk tradition where you just dance however you feel comfortable. "

" It's hard to reconcile my personal beliefs with an entire institution like the Church or the Republicans. Or with people within those political persuasions who have such different ideologies but confess the same things I confess spiritually. "

" 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. "

" 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 U.S. I think there's a danger when you start creating a civilisation that isn't meant to last. "

" I think musicians should stay off television generally. "

" I always hated 'O Holy Night.' It's so operatic and overwrought. "

" I wouldn't mind being popular in other ways, but not with music. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Every time Jimmy Scott sings, it's the same but slightly different. I don't know how he does that or where he gets that from. I think it's instinct. Nothing he does is by chance; he's in complete control of what he's doing. He's just beautiful and unique. "

" I believe that music is a spiritual language. My everyday self is pretty mundane and boring, but when I'm making music it allows for me to communicate a kind of transcendence that I can't communicate otherwise. "

Sufjan Stevens

Music

Spiritual

" Audacity is central to everything I do. A lot of times I think my work is about just seeing if I can get away with it. "

" I still feel like I have a lot to learn in the realm of sound experimentation, and I think I would like things to get noisier and weirder and more distressed and more aggressive, but I don't know if that's something that would be suitable for public consumption. "

Sufjan Stevens

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