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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. "

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" 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. "

Sufjan Stevens

Think

Know

Art

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

" I'd like to do a record that doesn't even reference actual places. Because I think it's kind of an open-ended concept. It doesn't have to be taken so literally. "

Sufjan Stevens

Places

Kind

" 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 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. "

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

" My only concern about art collaborations is that I never thought of myself as an Artist. My tax forms say Musician/Songwriter. "

" I find in music there's a space and a language I can use to express things in ways I can't describe conversationally. "

" 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. "

" I think musicians should stay off television generally. "

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" In third grade, I had to an oral report on the state of Oregon. I brought up Big Foot sightings, and I remember there was an argument about whether or not Big Foot was valid history. Ever since then I've been thinking about how subjective history is. "

" 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 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 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

Feel

Learn

" I'm pretty involved in everything I do, which isn't always efficient and doesn't necessarily make for the more successful product. But I do feel that, in that sense, everything I do has a comprehensiveness to it. "

Sufjan Stevens

Feel

Product

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

" Public school felt like prison - cinderblock walls, fluorescent lights, metal lockers. It was so sterile and unstimulating. "

Sufjan Stevens

School

Prison

" 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. "

" I've read in a couple stories that I was raised Episcopalian, but that's not true. I think that's just people assuming things. In some ways, I wish I was raised Episcopalian. I was kind of raised hodgepodge. "