Rufus Wainwright Quotes

I've developed into quite a swan. I'm one of those people that will probably look better and better as I get older - until I drop dead of beauty.

There's prejudice everywhere. I don't think the music industry is as bad as the movie industry. But I have taken a few hits over the years for my sexuality, and for being honest about my life. In the end, it's the music that rules the roost.

All humans realize they are loved when witnessing the dawn; early morning is the triumph of good over evil. Absolved by light we decide to go on.

I have this horrible, horrible habit of going on YouTube and checking out comments about what I do.

When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations.

I strive for what you do find in Shakespeare's work - that there is a definite humanity and a definite character behind the writing in the sonnets, and it's very real because it's so deeply personal. I try to aspire to that in what I do.

I have a three-year-old daughter, which makes me more environmentally conscious. For me, it's about the future.

I may not lead the most dramatic life, but in my brain it's 'War and Peace' everyday.

It seems like the older I get, the more unreal the world becomes.

A diaper is as inspiring as a drink.

Opera needs to be a total escape from real life. To relate to what we're going through today is fine and dandy, but it's really about being transported and completely swept away by a romantic notion.

Let the little fairy in you fly!

I love being not cool.

Being with the president's daughter, no matter who the president is, you are connected to the most powerful political force on earth, and that's scary. And when you mix crystal meth and alcohol with that, it's ... kind of exciting. A little too exciting.

I've always gravitated towards opera, and the Royal Opera House is quite possibly the greatest opera house on earth.

I'm not a terrible smoker, actually. My major addiction, which is horrible, is straight boys.

My mother had a lot of parties when I was a child. There'd always be a moment when she would place me on the upright piano and have me sing Somewhere 'Over the Rainbow'.

When I'm in the classical world, I really treat it as exactly classical and I don't try and spruce it up or jazz it up or make it easier for the masses.

I personally don't have the ability to lie about my life, for better or for worse.

I'm not born again, I'm not Kabbalah, God forbid, but I did have an experience hitting 30 that I needed to lean on something that assured me that everything is going to be okay. I had to regain a lot of my belief in fairy tales, in happy endings.

Writing an opera and premiering in England, you could say I was going right into the eye of the storm and I came out successfully. A little tattered and bruised, but so what, I made it.

Climate change has always been sort of my main focus. I think also with [what happened in Fukushima, Japan] there's still a lot to think about in terms of what's coming down the pike into the world's oceans, too.

Once you've fallen from classical virtue, won't have a soul for to wake up and hold you.

I think we could all be a bit more elitist.

Places that have experienced great defeat experience a kind of rebirth, which I think America has to do - unless we want to get more decrepit. I don't think we have to destroy the place totally.

I just think it's better to have ideas. I mean, you can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier, people die for them, people kill for them.

I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though.

The Germany I was enthused with was more old fashioned and kind of romantic. I just got there, and the next thing you know, I had this huge gilded album. It was kind of an amazing experience because I didn't intend it to be that way.

I don't really have a relationship with the guitar; it's like my slutty lover, whereas I'm married to the piano

When I wrote the opera, I made a deal with myself that for at least an hour a day I would work on it, even if it meant just sitting on my piano bench, staring into space and thinking about it. It's about keeping it regular, like your bowel movements - let's get real: it's your bodily artistic movements! It comes from the same place.

Premiering a new opera is probably one of the hardest things in the world to do, and opening nights of any opera are always pretty stressful.

To me, songs come of their own volition - and with an open-ended philosophy.

Once illness strikes, you realize there's not a lot of time for you to do what you really need to do. And there's no time like the present.

There is actually a great book called Prima Donna by Rupert -Christiansen that deconstructs the myth. In fact, many of the women who were prima donnas were feminists and incredible forces for their time.

I think I've done a pretty fantastic job, but of course I want to sell millions of records.

I basically have needed to go to the piano and give voice periodically to, you know - I'm always afraid to describe it as a kind of therapeutic process, but nevertheless it was a type of unloading that had to occur due to my personal life with my mother's health or just my professional trials and tribulations.

Growing up, for years and years I had no idea what the plots of operas were, and that's part of what fascinated me - I could make them up and learn bits and pieces of what was going on over time. There's something about it being always a step away that makes it more fun to chase.

I don't want to hold you and feel so helpless I don't want to smell you and lose my senses And smile in slow motion With eyes in love.

I wish I could just relax sometimes and make some money, but I always feel like I have to prove some kind of big, profound point.

I could always escape into this demi-monde of homosexuality, which I feel really indebted to. It stopped me being a 'mummy's boy.'

The artist who gave me the most inspiration and direction, especially as a singer - and I absolutely consider myself a singer, 100 percent - is Nina Simone. She's my ultimate pianist-singer-type person.

Life is the longest death in California,

My love of maple syrup. I've been known to knock back a can over a couple days: A swig here, a swig there, and next thing you know it's gone. It's a habit I have to stave off. I don't want to lose all my teeth.

I very much faced my mother's death with hard, arduous and time-consuming labor. The more I would do, the less I would feel.

I really need to know I may just never see you again, or might as well You took advantage of a world that loved you well I'm going to a town that has already been burnt down I'm so tired of you, America.

Looking back, one of the things I love most about my mom was that she never, ever relented. She stuck to her guns right up until the end. She wasn't abusive, but she was never that thrilled that I was gay.

I'm hyper light-sensitive and must sleep in the equivalent of a sealed tomb.

I have an ounce of Lady Gaga's full-bodied ambition.

I was in the forest jumping around daffodils while everyone was high on heroin.

I will take my coffee black / never snack / hang with the wolves who are sheepish.

There's no life without humour. It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious, and it can make tragic moments bearable.

When it comes to sitting down and composing, there is no hesitation, no concern, no critics breathing fire down my neck. For me, writing a song is the purest part of all. No one can mess with that.

I have never cooked a meal in my life and always end up paying for dozens of people to eat with me.

I have a good face for what I do.

Yes, I'm a homosexual and I like to shock people with glamour.

I have managed to eke out a good and substantial existence. I'm not shoveling gold bricks or anything, but I do very, very well.

I've had my ups and downs, and I definitely have a sense - in America, especially - that once you've made your mark and gotten your Rolling Stone piece and your Grammy nomination, that they're on to the next piece of meat, and they don't necessarily like to follow the twists and turns of an artistic career.

I bemoan the fact that all my famous friends have places in St. Bart's and I have to go to Montauk.

After years of hotels, I'm horribly inept at cleaning up after myself.

I want to carve out a serious period of time to focus on the next opera without any distractions. And to do that you need money.

Wouldn't Ponochio II be a great musical, now that he has to face the real world and get a wife ... job. Now he wants to be a toy again.

Madonna created a monster that sucks up souls.

I made the decision to take on board the critical feedback. Reviews are something you can easily ignore as a performer or writer but I chose to not ignore them here and I think that I benefited. I think I'm stronger for it - and I have a tougher skin as a result.

Well, my great lesson with that was I went to the same production twice - once completely high and once completely sober - and both times were equally wonderful.

All these poses of classical torture ruined my mind like a snake in the orchard. I did go from wanting to be someone, now I'm drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue.

I believe in freedom Freedom's apparently all I need But who's ever been free in this world? Who has never had to bleed in this world?

You had to be an over-the-top, demanding, dramatic figure in order to progress as a woman in Europe over the last few hundred years. Now people say, "You're being such a prima donna," meaning you're being hard to deal with or crazy. It's a bit sexist.

One of the main destructive forces within our family has been these runaway egos. I think if you look at any show business family, that struggle exists.

I'll be honest, I worry sometimes about what I've done. I have tied my whole person to my art and, whatever it takes to get that hook, I will go there and do it.

I do not consider myself a guitar player. My father is a guitar player - I'm not.

In the music business, to survive for so long, you have to be able to cut off from your emotions sometimes. And being a father, you're faced with that situation. I know that my father was, with me. I understand why he had to be distant, because to rip yourself away, time after time, is almost more devastating.

But I want to deepen as an artist, and working with Shakespeare definitely points in that direction.

You know the question: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' Answer: 'Practise?' Well, in my case, I got there by not practising. I didn't finish my music degree. And when I got into the pop world, I decided not to conform because I figured that the point of being an artist was that you shouldn't be like anyone else.

In the present world, this technological, psychotic, politicised, nonsensical world, you have to believe that the good guys are going to win! That evil will be banished somehow!

I think everybody identified at a pretty young age that I was fairly entranced with myself. And that I had to be tempered.

I've been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I've been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.

I have a lot of advantages: I'm not addicted to horrifying pills. I also have surrounded myself with far more caring and upright individuals. And I wasn't abused as a child, so I'm doing okay!

I've paid the price; I definitely have a reputation that precedes me, and there is a camp that plots my demise. But then again ... it's funner that way.

I think my mother, more than anyone, knew the importance of inspiration. If it was occurring, you had to use it.

Putting all of my time In learning to care And a bucket of rhymes I threw up somewhere Want a locket of who Made me lose my perfunctory view Of all that is around And of all that I do.

I'll always be a boulevardier. I have an extreme reverence and romantic longing for all that is decrepit and fatalistic.

What I love about my daughter is that she is going to definitely allow me and force me to change my life and slow down and make it more about the real things in the world.

Unless I have my aunt or my boyfriend to take care of me, I'm a little pathetic.

Somebody curse the light And take me far away from myself

I'm definitely a fan of juxtaposition. Using the most beautiful line to say the most horrific thing - I think one of the main things in songwriting is definitely friction between the words and the melody.

My love of classical hit pretty early. I was 13 when it occurred, and that was really the only music I listened to for many, many years. I went to a conservatory, but I always knew I would be in the pop world, because A) it was more fun and B) you didn't have to practice as much and you could go out more. But I immediately saw this opportunity to inject my material with these sounds that most members of my generation really didn't know about, so it was a great way to differentiate myself from the pack.

I think my imagination and my passions are still firing away, but it's really the body that starts to make up the rules. It's not a major problem; it's just when you get a little older you realize how much your body thanks you when you are good to it.

I should write a musical. That is probably one of the final areas that I should pay attention to, because it does kind of involve everything. It's got theatre, it's got young, pretty people ... And it's got money!

Every video I do is over budget by the time I walk on set. I am massively extravagant in my personal habits.

My parents were serious working musicians, but they were not stars - not like pop stars that you have now. They had to make a living and that meant touring, working hard, going on the road - and we were roped in.

But I don't even think you hear me at all Under your medieval ceiling behind your biblical wall

My dad and I have always been somewhat competitive.

Being uncool is being pretty much the coolest you can be.

Why be in music, why write songs, if you can't use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life? I believe a lot of our lives are spent asleep, and what I've been trying to do is hold on to those moments when a little spark cuts through the fog and nudges you.

I think the minute you mention death, people run for the hills - unless it's heavy metal. People do not like death.

I've written songs for Shirley Bassey, Marianne Faithfull, and Linda Thompson. I sort of focus on these wonderful, aging divas. But maybe that's because I think I'm Christina Aguilera.

New York is not the centre for American culture and art that it once was because of the forces of conservatism. Giuliani, capitalism - and then there was 9/11. I really believe that if I leave, it will suffer! Maybe that's why I love it here, because I feel wanted.

I have earned hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I can't seem to get to grips with money.

I was reared on folk music.

I definitely consider 'Poses' - the whole album in fact - to be kind of a miracle. Like the last breath of that moment when decadence is healthy, 'Poses' encapsulates that feeling. It's a kind of song and a kind of album that I'll never be able to repeat.