Quotes from Ezra Furman

We spent a lot of time making 'Transangelic Exodus' and toward the end of it, my ability and my love for music - that is, just garage music, direct and immediate - started to feel neglected.

Not only am I a shy person, I take a little while to say what I mean, especially in a social situation, and usually those move too fast for me to say anything at all.

I could write a joke song really easily, but I think something that might be true for my generation is that there's a certain irony or detachedness expected of us, even though we really feel sincere. So the only way to sincerity is through a joke.

I feel like one thing that messed me up was living in a homophobic and transphobic society, and just being the object of mockery and disgust in your average sitcom or movie or person at school.

I see a skill developing of writing about not just feelings that I'm feeling, but things that I deeply care about as well.

Learning that someone is gay, queer, trans, doesn't tell you much by itself. They could be any kind of person aside from that particular slice of identity.

We punk fans have so much energy to give to the fight against injustice, i.e. the abuse of the poor by the rich, i.e. climate change.

I want to be a force that tries to revive the human spirit rather than crush it, to open possibilities rather than close them down. Sometimes a passionate negativity is the best way to do that.

Just being a normal person and having a social life involves a lot of dishonesty for me.

I really don't care about what anyone says unless they are also gender-nonconforming. Then I really listen. I love the solidarity felt between us gender failures.

I think of myself as someone who's trying to be a great songwriter and a great performer. And I mean really great.

Chuck Berry invented rock 'n' roll. He was one of the best songwriters of the 20th century.

I am frustrated at misconceptions of me, and being cast in a role.

Ezra Furman And The Boy-Friends was a band with a specific mission - to be a really good rock'n'roll band. And we achieved it.

Judaism is a way of thinking, more than anything else, that I think is entirely distinct, and the more you know of it, the more you can enter into that kind of thinking.

Lou Reed was an ideal figure to me. He was bisexual, like me, and seemed to inhabit an ambiguous middle place on the masculine-feminine spectrum.

My Jewishness and queerness are very interwoven, and, although they sometimes conflict culturally, intellectually and spiritually they deepen one another for me.

I'm in this effort to unify my life and to live day to day in a disciplined way, to be real at all times, not just in front of people, or not just in a synagogue.

I'm a big fan of Louis CK - I think he's a master of standup.

It's always about staying competitive with myself... Popularity is something that may happen from time to time, and I don't trust it and I don't think it means too much. I'm going for greatness.

I write good songs out of fear... fear of failure. Because if they're not good enough, you feel yourself starting to fall.

I'm interested in God. I'm not interested in religion for religion's sake.

I don't like the notion that artists have a responsibility to be political.

Being in a rock n' roll group, or being a musician, it is in conflict in some serious cultural ways with being an observant Jew, but in a conceptual way, for me, they go together real well.