EZRA FURMAN

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

Some part of me hopes for a guardian angel to protect me and other people who need protection.

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.

I was pretty much into punk rock and that's all I cared about. I was into Green Day and the Ramones. I wanted to get a guitar so I could play punk songs because this kid taught me power chords at summer camp.

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.

I think I'm becoming a climate activist.

Jews like to write and sing. In America, a lot of us have been eager to show that we're part of American culture. But it all goes back to King David writing Psalms.

I first got into music when I heard punk, and it was saying maybe it's OK if you don't live up to the expectations various authorities have for you.

Part of what you hear when somebody says something awful to you is like, 'They're right, I look ridiculous, why am I dressed this way, I should go home and change.' For me that voice is always in my head, right around the corner.

The first music I loved on my own was punk.

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

If I can see the sunrise - and I usually don't - I like to. I'm a big fan of the sun.

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.

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

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 love it when people write rapturously about music they love.

I think of myself as a tomgirl. A boy who's girly in every presentational aspect. And I play guitar and write good songs.

I'm a shy person whose very presence has become a confrontation. I think that's true of a lot of queer people.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

I don't really worship the album 'Transformer.' It's not the best thing that Lou Reed has done.

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.