Conor Oberst Quotes

102 Sourced Quotes

I drug your ghost across the country, and we plotted out my death.
Every city and memory we whispered "Here is where you rest."
Well I was determined in Chicago but I dug my teeth into my knees
And I settled for a telephone, sang into your machine:
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine."

Conor Oberst
So immagine what you want and hold onto that thought
cause thats as close as it will ever come
and believe you're were you're are
keep acting out the part
but at the end of the day
the trees all get wheeled away
and you'll be standing alone in a blank, blank space

Conor Oberst
And the sad act like lepers
They stick to the shadows
They long to ring bells of warning
To tell of their coming
So that the pure can shut their doors.

Conor Oberst
Well, ABC, NBC, CBS: Bullshit.
They give us fact or fiction?
I guess an even split.

Conor Oberst
Everything must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.

Conor Oberst
But greed is a bottomless pit
And our freedom's a joke we're just taking a piss
And the whole world must watch the sad comic display
If you're still free start runnin' away
'cause we're comin' for ya!

Conor Oberst
If the world could remain within a frame
Like a painting on a wall,
Then I think we would see the beauty, then
We would stand staring in awe
At our still lives posed
Like a bowl of oranges,
Like a story told
By the fault lines and the soil.

Conor Oberst
If I die tonight, then I guess I die tonight
Let me go on.

Conor Oberst
The hook is in deep boys,
there is no more time.
So you can struggle in the water
and be too stubborn to die,
or you could just let go and be lifted to the sky.

Conor Oberst
The animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness.

Conor Oberst
You've been a father to me.
Your 1960's speak.
Gives me comatose joy like re-run TV.
While the mountainside was shining.
Wild colors of my destiny

Conor Oberst
And there's kids playing guns in the streets
And one's pointing his tree branch at me
So I put my hands up I say
"Enough is enough,
If you walk away I walk away."
And he shot me dead.

Conor Oberst
There is no Hell when you die
so don't look so worried

Conor Oberst
And me I'm in the bathroom
crying out my eyelids because it's hard to be a man
when you're scared, just like a little kid.

Conor Oberst
Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep
And all their tearful words will turn back into steam

Conor Oberst
So hurry up and run to the one that you love.
And blind him with your kindness.
And he'll make war, oh war,
On who you were before.
And he'll claim all that has spoiled in your heart.

Conor Oberst
My parents ask if I'm alright; I say "I've just been staying up too late.
I need to sleep" I need to do something!
To get this awful weight up off my chest,
keep her pretty ghost from chasing me!

Conor Oberst
For a song I was bought
Now I lie when I talk
With a careful eye on the cue card.
Onto a stage I was pushed,
With my sorrow well rehearsed.
So give me all your pity and your money, now (all of it).

Conor Oberst
As they take eye for an eye until no one can see,
we must stumble blindly forward, repeating history.

Conor Oberst
And it's too hard to focus through all this doubt
I keep making this to-do list but nothing gets crossed out
Working on the record seems pointless now
When the world ends who's gonna hear it?

Conor Oberst
And I sing and sing of awful things
The pleasure that my sadness brings.

Conor Oberst
I think it is more like a ghost
that has been following us both.
Something vague that we're not seeing,
something more like a feeling.
Now I know a disease that these Doctors can't treat.
You contract on the day you accept all you see is a mirror and a mirror is all it can be.
A reflection of something we're missing.

Conor Oberst
So I go back and forth forever
All my thoughts they come in pairs
Oh I will, I won't, I doubt, I don't,
I'm not surprised but I never feel quite prepared

Conor Oberst
He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper.
I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover.

Conor Oberst
It's exploding bags, aerosol cans
Southbound buses, Peter Pan
They left it up to us again
I thought you knew the drill
It's kill or be killed.

Conor Oberst
There was this book I read and loved,
The story of a ship
Who sailed around the world and found
That nothing else exists
Beyond its own two sails
And wooden shell
And what is held within.
All else is sure to pass.
We clutch and grasp
And debate what's truly permanent.

Conor Oberst
If you wanna see the future,
Go stare into a cloud.

Conor Oberst
And me I'm in my bedroom drawing in my notebook
Because my hand thinks I'm an artist
But my heart knows I'm a poet
It's just words they mean so little to me.

Conor Oberst
I started to sink like the moon tends to do if you stare at it too long
Then you blink and it's gone
I guess time has a way of making everything alright
it's just there is not enough of it
and so we drink and we sing and we celebrate
this lie and hope that it will last
morning is here night has passed
A celebration upon completion

Conor Oberst
I hear if you make friends with Jesus Christ, you will get right up from that chalk outline. And then you'll get dolled up, and you'll dress in white all to take your place in his chorus line. And then in you'll come with those marching drums in a saintly compromise. No more whiskey slurs, no more blonde-haired girls for your whole eternal life. And you'll do the dance that was choreographed at the very dawn of time. Singing "I told you son, the day would come you would die, you'd die you'd die you'd die you'd die".

Conor Oberst