Rufus Wainwright Quotations

Life is a game and true love is a trophy.

I still believe that love is the most powerful force in the world, even though I am yet to experience it fully.

Crazy as it sounds, I'm a believer in destiny and serendipity, and I have had cosmic experiences all my life. Something told me I was meant for greater stuff. And look, I've had a baby! And I've written an opera!

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.

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.

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.

My cheeks explode when I smile. Thats why I have to look so nonplussed.

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

When it came to using elements of your personal life in your work, my mother was the master, or the mistress. There were three or four songs she wrote about my father - songs about failed love.

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

For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust.

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.

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 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.

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

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 think we could all be a bit more elitist.

Some people go to Berlin to get more cutting edge; I went and started wearing lederhosen and going to visit baroque palaces.

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

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.

I'm a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelites. Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and I realised recently that my music is Pre-Raphaelite in a certain way, in that it reinvents an older era and romanticises it, puts it in this gilded frame.

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

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.

We made a pact to light up and then we were whisked away,

Dinner at eight was okaybefore the toast full of gleams.It was great until those old magazinesgot us started up again.Actually it was probably me again.

Everything I do, I feel is genius. Whether it is or it isn't.

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

It's about how whenever I fall in love, I have these expectations of the experience being a perfect dream, which, of course, ruins it. I imagine cradling my lover's head in my lap in a cab in the middle of the night, and drinking champagne in an elegant hotel suite. But life's rarely like that, and I usually end up walking home by myself in the rain.

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

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 twistsand turns of an artistic career. Throwing an opera at them is something they have to notice. There's nothing subtle about it.

As an artist, you put so much into what you do and it can all be torn down in a nanosecond.

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

I like to think of myself as a combination of Sid Vicious and Virgil Thompson

I was keenly aware that I didn't want to draw on too many typically doomed aspects of the fated singer. Whether it's Judy Garland or Norma Desmond, there is this tragic quality to older women that one can revel in, and you want it to be more three-dimensional than that. So it was important for the character to be strong and resilient, because there are so many victims in opera.

I'm your knight in shining armor. I'm here to save you from Linkin Park.

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

I am undefinable. I don't fit into any particular category.

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

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.

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.

I definitely try to broaden the scope of music. I don't know if it's pop or classical or what, but I'm religiously challenging myself all the time, for better or for worse.

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.

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.

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.

For better or worse, I've always been curious musically. Whether it's opera or Judy Garland or pop, I've deliberately sought those things out. I've never wanted to do the same things over and over. Some think I've accomplished what I set out to do, and others consider me a dilettante.

Arguably, the relationship between Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland is one of the great mother-daughter sagas of all time. Certainly, for certain people, and a lot of them, Liza is the bigger star. Liza is the more kind of viable legend, shall we say. Then there's the other camp, where Judy is the one.

I've developed a bit of a fascination with John Denver. I always thought he was kind of tacky and somewhat revolting and had a kind of simplistic weirdness, but on second listen, he actually did have an incredible voice, and the blatant naiveté of his work is straight-edge, in a way.

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 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.

The more hedonistic you were, the better...I very much subscribed to that as a young artist.

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

Life is the longest death in California,

I don't know if it will be my big comeback, but I think it is a statement - that I am a self-sustaining, vibrant, long-term artist, and I'm not going away! And if you don't give me credit, then the musical gods will!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm 33 and in my "Jesus year," and I want it all right now. I want a perfect body. I want to have a perfect love affair. I want every member of my family to be healthy and happy. And I want the world to save itself and for America to realize that it has to give up its idea of being an empire. Wait until I hit 40; then it'll all come crumbling down.

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.

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.

You get to a certain age, and you feel the need to reward yourself just for existing.

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

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

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

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

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

I have a good face for what I do.

I find so many songwriters today are missing an element... either the production is amazing but the songs aren't, or it's the other way around.

If I had had more of a strategic attitude towards how to reveal my sexuality, and if I'd even played with it a little more, I could have sold a lot more albums and been a lot more famous.

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

I came out of the closet very young, and I had to cut my teeth pretty fast.

A diaper is as inspiring as a drink.

I am regarded as a usurper, as an imposter and dilettante, because I do technically come from the wrong side of the tracks in musical terms.

Let the little fairy in you fly!

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.

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

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

I like to try new things.

There is this church that I go to a lot in New York. I'm not religious but I love lighting candles and stuff. I find it useful.

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.

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

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

When I was signed, at the age of 23...the fact that I presented myself as an out gay man was very, very unusual.

I was reared on folk music.

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.

I knew I was gay when I was around 13. There wasn't the internet, there weren't support groups, AIDS was everywhere. I mean, it was really dark.

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

The moment something happens to one you love, it's twenty times more intense. You experience pain and enlightenment on a much vaster scale.

I definitely was always expected and encouraged to be a songwriter from a very young age, ... But really it's because, as a child, I thought I was Judy Garland. And when I started out, I was a little nuts. I thought I was a classic, legendary superstar when only 10 people knew who I was. I feel in some ways that my confidence is misinterpreted as arrogance, which is understandable. But I've also always thought that false modesty is evil.

I'm very fit on tour. I try to eat well, try to sleep. But it's still rock n' roll.

The operas I listen to aren't in English, and I want to listen to my opera after I'm done with it. I want to have the desire to play it on the stereo. To me, the language is part of the mystery.

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

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

I love being not cool.

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.