Conor Oberst is an American singer-songwriter best known for his work in Bright Eyes. He has also played in several other bands, including Desaparecidos, Commander Venus and Park Ave.

Sourced

• I never fuck with Facebook. I absolutely despise social networking. I think it's truly going to result in the destruction of mankind. Sometimes I just wish I didn't live in this time. Before, there was so much more freedom and privacy, and you could truly escape places.
  • Norris, Chris (June 25, 2009), "CONOR OBERST'S MYSTICAL AWAKENING". Rolling Stone. (1081):66-84

A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997 (1998)

• The world's become a little too mean.
  • Saturday as Usual

• 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.
  • Saturday as Usual

• My Brother went to college
  To become a doctor
  And if he studies hard enough
  He'll end up just like papa, who hates his life.
  • Saturday as Usual

• 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.
  • Saturday as Usual

Letting Off the Happiness (1998)

• I swear that I'm dying
  slowly but it's happening,
  and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere...
  just take me there.
  • If Winter Ends

• In a coma, you don't dream,
  you just hope that someone sits with you.
  • Padraic My Prince

Insound Tour Support No.12 (2000)

• Well morning came, and it dressed the sky in a lovely yellow gown.
  Shopping malls are opening in that narrow hallway of downtown,
  filled with people who are shopping for their lovers and their friends,
  singing "I won't ever be lonely again"
  • I Won't Ever be Happy Again

• There's a cat in the window, of the house of my lover.
  Well she sleeps there alone now, or perhaps with another.
  Oh I try no to think about that, I try not to think at all!

• 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!

• So you say there are spaces, opening wide?
  Oh believe me, there's day longer than nights.
  And you could be happy, if only you'd try.
  But you don't try. No you don't try.

• And you speak of a fever, that burns you inside,
  as you explain to your mother, how you've wanted to die.
  So she kisses your fingers, and says "My darling, but why?
  When there is so much more. There is so much more."

• You could be happy, the minute you try.
  Why won't you try? Oh won't you try?
  • The Joy in Forgetting - The Joy in Acceptance

Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

• 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.
  • Arienette

• 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."
  • The Calendar Hung Itself

• And I sing and sing of awful things
  The pleasure that my sadness brings.
  • Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh

• For a sunrise or a sunset, you're manic or you’re depressed.
  Will you ever feel ok?
  • Sunrise, Sunset

• 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.
  • Something Vague

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

• If you wanna see the future,
  Go stare into a cloud.
  • The Big Picture

• 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.
  • Bowl of Oranges

• Ambition, I’ve found, can lead only to failure. I do not read the reviews. No, I am not singing for you.
  • Let's Not Shit Ourselves

• Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt.
  Do you like to hurt?
  I do, I do
  then hurt me.
  • Lover I Don't Have to Love

• So you think I need some discipline, well, I had my share. I have been sent to my room. I've been sat in a chair. I held my tongue. I didn't plug my ears. No, I got a good talking to. And now I don't know why, but I still try to smile when they talk at me like I'm just a child. Well, I'm not a child. No, I am much younger than that. And now I have read some books and have grown quite brave. If only I could just speak up I think I would say that there is no truth. There is only you and what you make the truth.
  • Don't Know When But A Day is Gonna Come

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

• My head's a carousel of pictures and
  The spinning never stops.
  • Nothing Gets Crossed Out

• 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).
  • False Advertising

• But where was it when I first heard that sweet sound of humility?
  It came to my ears in the goddamn loveliest melody!
  How grateful I was, then, to be part of the mystery,
  To love, and to be loved!
  Let’s just hope that is enough.
  • Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and to Be Loved)

• But you should never be embarrassed by your trouble with living
  Cause it's the ones with the sorest throats Laura,
  who have done the most singing.
  • Laura Laurent

There Is No Beginning to the Story (2003)

• We're all too busy working, entertaining ourselves
  With forty hours of television and prescription pills
  Well, I take two a day to help my brain behave
  It never does, but who's to say? At least my doctor gets paid.
  • Loose Leaves

• 'Cause a costume can be comfortable
  It can make you feel more beautiful
  It can even make you look like someone else
  But it's still you, so there's nothing you can do
  Like a bad habit, the one you couldn't kick, there it always is
  And it's nothing that no doctor's gonna fix.
  • We Are Free Men

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

• I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss
  So many men stronger than me
  Have thrown their backs out trying to lift it
  But me I'm not a gamble
  You can count on me to split
  The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist.
  • Lua

• I'd rather be working for a paycheck, than waiting to win the lottery.
  Besides, maybe this time it's different, I mean,
  I really think you like me.
  • First Day of my Life

• 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.
  • Landlocked Blues

• And I never thought this life was possible,You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for.
  • Poison Oak

• Well, I could have been a famous singer
  If I had someone else's voice
  But failure's always sounded better
  Let's fuck it up, boys, make some noise!
  • Road To Joy

• i keep drinking the ink from my pen
  and i'm balancing history books up on my head
  but it all boils down to one quotable phrase
  if you love something give it away
  • landlocked blues

• a good woman will pick you apart
  a box full of suggestions for your possible heart
  and you may be offended. and you may be afraid
  but don't walk away, don't walk away
  • landlocked blues

• we made love on the living room floor
  with the noise in the background of a televised war
  and in that defeaning pleasure i thought i heard someone say
  if we walk away they'll walk away
  • landlocked blues

Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (2005)

• I want to be the surgeon who cuts you open
  Who fixes all of life's mistakes
  I want to be the house that you were raised in
  The only place where you feel safe.
  • Ship in a Bottle

• 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".
  • Arc Of Time

• Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot
  My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts
  I never really dreamed of heaven much
  Until we put him in the ground.
  • Easy/Lucky/Free

• You took off your clothes and left on the light,
  You stood there so brave, you used to be shy,
  Each feature improved, each movement refined,
  And eyes like a showroom.
  • Take it Easy (Love Nothing)

Cassadaga (2007)

• 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.
  • Clairaudients(Kill or Be Killed)

• The squatters made a mural of a Mexican girl
  With fifteen cans of spray paint and a chemical swirl
  She's standing in the ashes at the end of the world
  Four winds blowing through her hair.
  • Four Winds

• On a detox loft through a Glendale Park over sidewalk chalk
  Someone wrote in red, "start over."
  • Cleanse Song

• Oh, I've made love, yeah, I've been fucked, so what?
  I'm a cartoon, you're a full moon, let's stay up.
  • Hot Knives

• You mean nothing to no one but that's nobody's fault.
  • Soul Singer in a Session Band

• Little soldier, little insect
  You know war it has no heart
  It will kill you in the sunshine
  Or happily in the the dark
  Where kindness is a card game
  Or a bent up cigarette
  In the trenches, in the hard rain
  With a bullet and a bet.
  • No One Would Riot for Less

• Everything must belong somewhere.
  I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.
  • I Must Belong Somewhere

• Don't be so amazing or I'll miss you too much.
  • "Lime Tree

Conor Oberst (2008)

• You’ve been a father to me.
  In 1960’s speak.
  Give me comatose joy like we’re on TV.
  While the mountain’s side was shining.
  Wild colors of my destiny
  • Cape Cañaveral

• And in the morning when the sun rise.
  Look in the water, see the blue sky.
  As if heaven has been laid there at our feet.
  • Sausalito

• I wanna be your happiness.
  I wanna be your common sense pain.
  • Get-Well-Cards

• If I loved you, well that's my fault
  • Lenders In The Temple

Unsourced

• Alright this is a love song; I don't know if you guys are into love around here or what but.. I don't know, it's pretty rad.
  • Introducing "First day of my life" in Paris, November 2004

• Do you guys consider yourselves to live in the country? [audience reaction]... I heard half "yes"es and have "no"s, so I guess you're confused.
  • Live in Fargo, North Dakota November 3, 2007.

• Don't listen, just leave.
  • A response to an audience member who cried out, "Don't play, just drink." at a concert in New Hampshire, November 2005.

• I can almost listen to a whole Justin Timberlake song without cringing. I do get a bit bummed out when it comes to Ashlee Simpson though.
  • When asked his opinion on current popular music artists

• I feel like we've got a lot of good karma stored up here in Columbus. A few years ago we played here and got kicked out of this club because we started a riot while we were playing, a cop threw Mike over a bike, and like, I pushed a cop, so we drove off in our van, playing our song, and wecome back the next day to load all our stuff, we realized left this unmarked, black bag. It's got all our contracts from the shows we played, $12,000 cash, half a bottle of wine, a bottle of vodka, and a joint. And we realize we left it on the sidewalk. We go back to get it, and of course its gone, so I feel like we've got all this good karma here because we probably made someones day. I'd like to think that a single mom picked it up..and.. sent her kids to.. the doctor or something. But uh..probably not. Probably someone just had a big fuckin' party.
  • May 20,2007 Columbus, Ohio

• I like to feel the burn of the audience's eyes when I'm whispering all my darkest secrets into the microphone
  • A scripted quote from Todd Fink (of The Faint) playing Conor Oberst in a fake interview on the album Fevers & Mirrors

• I'd rather put a fucking gun to my head than live in your state
  • To concert goers,after finishing a show in Texas

• Craig Ferguson: See, I love your work, and I-I'm reading that they're comparing you- saying you're the new Bob Dylan and all that, how does that stuff kinda get you, do you like that? Do you not like it?
  Conor Oberst: Uh, I mean... There's certainly worse things to be called.

• Screaming is bad for the voice, but it's good for the soul.

• The whole ideology of indie rock doesn't hold any water anymore; it's not that clear-cut. Every time we sell a record, Time Warner gets a dime from our distributor. I already give a ridiculous amount of my income to the United States government, which is probably the most evil organization on the planet as far as killing people; I don't know how many bombs I've purchased with my tax dollars. Unless you're gonna live on a mountain somewhere, you're not gonna be free of the modern world and all the evils that go with it. What you can do is operate with intelligence and be compassionate, help people when you can. Do things not just for money, but for the craft of it.
  • From an interview in "Spin" (April 2007)

• This next song is about train hopping. I don't know if there are any hobos in the audience...
  • Before singing "If the Brakeman Turns My Way", live in Ferrara, Italy, 17th July 2007.

• This one goes out to Dick Cheney and his army of satan.
  • In Iowa City before singing "Lets not shit ourselves"

• This song is about waking up from a really, really long nightmare
  • Before Singing "First day of my life" in London July 2007

• We're all a little broken. We're all a little twisted. We're all less than we could be or want to be.
  • From an interview in "Filter" (February 2005)

• Well, I mean...there are certainly worse things to be called
  • When asked by Craig Ferguson about the comparison between him and Bob Dylan.

• When it rains it pours, they say. My guess is that its those damned English terrorists with their weather machine, trying to ruin our fun.
  • After the roof of the tent collapsed and Oberst was drenched with the collected rainwater. Oxegen Festival, Dublin, July 2007.

• Well, if you die... that's a bummer...
  • When asked "How drunk is too drunk?"

• I don't know where those hippies went.
  • Said by him in the new documentary One of My Kind