Quotes from Ezra Furman

I love obsessive fandom because I'm an obsessive fan who flips out over music.

Listening to songs is like eating and writing songs is like vomiting. You're putting a ton of stuff in, it combines in unpredictable ways, and comes back out in a big mess.

Sometimes there's a day where I don't feel good being out in the world, and I feel unsafe in the world in general. And an anxiety about just showing up in the world. It's kind of irrational, but people do say things to me out in the street about how I'm dressed.

I've been writing songs since I was a teenager, so one kind of song I've written a lot is about, I don't know, teen angst feelings - feeling unsure of yourself and immature.

God is close to the brokenhearted, and God lifts up the lonely. That was a message that was explicitly quoted to me and was part of my upbringing: Brokenhearted people and poor people and people who are in trouble should be your focus, and you should be on their team.

Far from being a showbiz gimmick, for me dressing as I please has signalled the end of a lifelong performance of straightforward masculinity.

Just being gender non-conforming opens you to trouble from strangers. And violence.

You have to make a character of yourself if you're going to be known to strangers.

My bassist Jorgen Jorgensen opened up my life to a lot of great, obscure old soul records.

If you get into really learning about the roots of monotheism, it was utterly a radical cultural moment. The Bible was so revolutionary and against all that came before it.

I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases - I'm addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.

A lot of bands break through with their third record: the White Stripes, the Clash, the Replacements.

I think there's a large worry in queer communities about imitating straight people, when queerness has its own identity and maybe can be a radical force that should be dismantling stuff that locks people into structures.

In terms of keeping kosher, I've basically just been vegetarian. I want to be fully vegetarian anyway, though sometimes my mom makes chicken soup and I have to eat it. I just love it.

I heard the Velvet Underground and that changed things when I was like, 15.

I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain the way that the Velvet Underground's records opened a door in my head. But it has something to do with Lou Reed as a mythic figure: a person who fitted no category, who defied limits and trends and definitions.

The Velvet Underground is probably the best band that's ever existed, assuredly the best American one.

I think I'm becoming a climate activist.

I was rather obsessed with angels.

I wear what I want to wear and appear on stage as myself.

There is something embarrassing about asking for money, but if I hadn't done that, I would have not continued to be a professional musician.

We need a lot more visibility of queer people in public life. People gotta get used to it.

One of my goals in making music is to make the world seem bigger, and life seem larger.