Ezra Furman Quotes
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I think of myself as someone who's trying to be a great songwriter and a great performer. And I mean really great.
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I was rather obsessed with angels.
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If I can see the sunrise - and I usually don't - I like to. I'm a big fan of the sun.
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I love it when people write rapturously about music they love.
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My favourite artists are the ones who are human, and you know they're not in a failure-proof environment.
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More visibility is more power, but more vulnerability.
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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.
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I wrote 'My Teeth Hurt' in April 2018 when my teeth hurt and I didn't have dental insurance.
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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.
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You have to make a character of yourself if you're going to be known to strangers.
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The Velvet Underground is probably the best band that's ever existed, assuredly the best American one.
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Far from being a showbiz gimmick, for me dressing as I please has signalled the end of a lifelong performance of straightforward masculinity.
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I honestly feel like I've been mostly toiling in obscurity until a little bit after 'Day Of the Dog' came out.
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A lot of bands break through with their third record: the White Stripes, the Clash, the Replacements.
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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.
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I'm interested in God. I'm not interested in religion for religion's sake.
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If you're trying to deal with being a marginalized person and trying to confront a larger population that isn't the same as you, you can be friendly about it, and invite everybody in, or you can be angry about it and be hostile and attack the systems that you want to destabilize.
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I wear what I want to wear and appear on stage as myself.
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I'm trying to be an activist, and I think of that as separate from my work as an artist. But it isn't.
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I thought as a kid, "Maybe I don't want to start a punk band necessarily. I just want to learn to be a great songwriter," and got really into trying to figure out how that could be possible.
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Once you admit how bad it feels to live in a broken society, you can start to resist it, and imagine a better one.
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I think I'm gradually becoming a more politically aware person.
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People get stigmatised for their bodies and for their differences. Then those people become very vulnerable.
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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.