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" 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. "

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" 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

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

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

" 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 think musicians should stay off television generally. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

Sufjan Stevens

School

Prison

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

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

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

" 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'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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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