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

I'm trying to be an activist, and I think of that as separate from my work as an artist. But it isn't.

I just don't care that much about the band name. I'm not so precious about it. The Harpoons were different people, but The Boy-Friends were and are the same people as The Visions. I changed it to The Visions when we made 'Transangelic Exodus' because I guess we didn't feel so friendly and boyish anymore.

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

My focus is matters of the heart and matters of the spirit, emotion and passion and stuff like that. But I think I've been getting better at being more specific about what it is I care about. Such as the welfare of refugees and solidarity between threatened populations.

We take a lot of inspiration from punk rock and early rock 'n' roll from the '50s and early '60s.

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 feel like my consignment and fear from people pushed me to become a performer.

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

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.

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

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

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

I grew up attending a Conservative day school, Solomon Schechter, until I was about 14, and going to a Reconstructionist synagogue.

As children my grandparents were refugees. Eventually they got to the U.S. - in 1950 or something. They grew up as refugees. Their earliest memories are of living in a home with their family. It's in my blood, I guess, to have a fear about encouraging fascism.

I don't really believe in trying to erase every Woody Allen movie from history. For one thing, that's kind of unfair to all the people who worked on those movies or albums or whatever it is. What did they do wrong to have their work erased from culture?

Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.

What does it mean to love someone with all your heart? It means to love with all your emotional feelings and with all your devotion. Surely when you love your wife with all your heart, you cannot demean her, criticize her, find fault with her, or abuse her by words, sullen behavior, or actions.

When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.

One who is kind is sympathetic and gentle with others. He is considerate of others' feelings and courteous in his behavior. He has a helpful nature. Kindness pardons others' weaknesses and faults. Kindness is extended to all - to the aged and the young, to animals, to those low of station as well as the high.

God will have a humble people. Either we can choose to be humble, or we can be compelled to be humble.

The fellowship of true friends who can hear you out, share your joys, help carry your burdens, and correctly counsel you is priceless.

You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible!

We are eternal beings. We lived as intelligent spirits before this mortal life. We are now living part of eternity. Our mortal birth was not the beginning; death, which faces all of us, is not the end.

The proud do not change to improve, but defend their position by rationalizing. Repentance means change, and it takes a humble person to change.

The great test of life is obedience to God.

With pride, there are many curses. With humility, there come many blessings.

Godly sorrow is a gift of the Spirit. It is a deep realization that our actions have offended our Father and our God. It is the sharp and keen awareness that our behavior caused the Savior, He who knew no sin, even the greatest of all, to endure agony and suffering.

Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the foundation upon which sincere and meaningful repentance must be built. If we truly seek to put away sin, we must first look to Him who is the Author of our salvation.

Our parents deserve our honor and respect for giving us life itself. Beyond this they almost always made countless sacrifices as they cared for and nurtured us through our infancy and childhood, provided us with the necessities of life, and nursed us through physical illnesses and the emotional stresses of growing up.

Every man eventually is backed up to the wall of faith, and there he must make his stand.

To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is all-consuming and all-encompassing. It is no lukewarm endeavor.

Praise your children more than you correct them. Praise them for even their smallest achievement.

The founders had a strong distrust for centralized power in a federal government. So they created a government with checks and balances. This was to prevent any branch of the government from becoming too powerful.

To lose yourself in righteous service to others can lift your sights and get your mind off personal problems, or at least put them in proper focus.

Periodic fasting can help clear up the mind and strengthen the body and the spirit.

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums.

Great battles can make great heroes and heroines.

False thinking and false ideologies, dressed in the most pleasing forms, quietly - almost without our knowing it - seek to reduce our moral defenses and to captivate our minds. They entice with bright promises of security, cradle-to-grave guarantees of many kinds.

Fatherhood is not a matter of station or wealth. It is a matter of desire, diligence and determination to see one's family exalted in the celestial kingdom. If that prize is lost, nothing else really matters.

When you choose to follow Christ, you choose to be changed.

God's revelation to Adam did not instruct Noah how to build the ark.

Youth is the spirit of adventure and awakening. It is a time of physical emerging when the body attains the vigor and good health that may ignore the caution of temperance. Youth is a period of timelessness when the horizons of age seem too distant to be noticed.

Be right, and then be easy to live with, if possible, but in that order.

The price of peace is righteousness.

The human body is the tabernacle of the spirit, and God expects that it be kept clean and unimpaired.

We must not lose hope. Hope is an anchor to the souls of men. Satan would have us cast away that anchor.

Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. 'How everything affects me' is the center of all that matters - self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking.

God loves us; the devil hates us. God wants us to have a fulness of joy as He has. The devil wants us to be miserable as he is. God gives us commandments to bless us. The devil would have us break these commandments to curse us.