“Let the little fairy in you fly!”
― Rufus Wainwright
“Life is a game and true love is a trophy.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“My cheeks explode when I smile. That’s why I have to look so nonplussed.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I am undefinable. I don’t fit into any particular category.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I think the minute you mention death, people run for the hills – unless it’s heavy metal. People do not like death.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“There’s no life without humour. It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious, and it can make tragic moments bearable.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“You get to a certain age, and you feel the need to reward yourself just for existing.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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!”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I may not lead the most dramatic life, but in my brain it’s ‘War and Peace’ everyday.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I’m your knight in shining armor. I’m here to save you from Linkin Park.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I’ve always gravitated towards opera, and the Royal Opera House is quite possibly the greatest opera house on earth.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I like to make the mundane fabulous whenever I can.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“It seems like the older I get, the more unreal the world becomes.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I’m hyper light-sensitive and must sleep in the equivalent of a sealed tomb.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“’Prima Donna’ is my kind of love song to opera but it’s not the full experience.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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’.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“Everything I do, I feel is genius. Whether it is or it isn’t.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I’m very fit on tour. I try to eat well, try to sleep. But it’s still rock n’ roll.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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!”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I’ve been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I’ve been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I think my mother, more than anyone, knew the importance of inspiration. If it was occurring, you had to use it.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I definitely have a Luddite’s approach to what’s going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“My dad and I have always been somewhat competitive.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I think I’ve done a pretty fantastic job, but of course I want to sell millions of records.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I bemoan the fact that all my famous friends have places in St. Bart’s and I have to go to Montauk.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I came out of the closet very young, and I had to cut my teeth pretty fast.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I do not consider myself a guitar player. My father is a guitar player – I’m not.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“That will to love is very powerful. But it doesn’t always win.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I think everybody identified at a pretty young age that I was fairly entranced with myself. And that I had to be tempered.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“The thing I hate most is false modesty. The artists who are, like, ‘Oh, you know, I’m really not that good. Oh, I can’t believe I’m here.’ I find it vaguely sinister, even.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I like to sing to Verdi, I like singing to Sibelius, and Mahler maybe.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I could always escape into this demi-monde of homosexuality, which I feel really indebted to. It stopped me being a ‘mummy’s boy.’”
― Rufus Wainwright
“My mother and father could not handle even me being gay. We never talked about it, really.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I would love to have a number one hit. The truth is if I don’t get one, I’ll be fine, but at the same time, the truth is that I’m dying for one, as well.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I have an ounce of Lady Gaga’s full-bodied ambition.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I have this horrible, horrible habit of going on YouTube and checking out comments about what I do.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“Unless I have my aunt or my boyfriend to take care of me, I’m a little pathetic.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“Being uncool is being pretty much the coolest you can be.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I love being not cool.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“After years of hotels, I’m horribly inept at cleaning up after myself.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I think we could all be a bit more elitist.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I am always writing; if you want to survive in this business, you need to keep working, keep creating and never stop the output.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I was reared on folk music.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“In retrospect, I’m really shocked at how far I put my heart out there on the line with ‘Prima Donna’. I seem to have this knack for being able to accomplish that.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I’m very much a romantic. I’m highly attuned to an older sensibility, which I believe is alive and well. We’re not that far ahead of the Romantic Age in society.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I have earned hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I can’t seem to get to grips with money.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I am ridiculously high-maintenance.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I have never cooked a meal in my life and always end up paying for dozens of people to eat with me.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“Every video I do is over budget by the time I walk on set. I am massively extravagant in my personal habits.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“To me, songs come of their own volition – and with an open-ended philosophy.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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!”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I still believe that love is the most powerful force in the world, even though I am yet to experience it fully.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I like to try new things.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“Some people go to Berlin to get more cutting edge; I went and started wearing lederhosen and going to visit baroque palaces.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“The moment something happens to one you love, it’s twenty times more intense. You experience pain and enlightenment on a much vaster scale.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“I have a good face for what I do.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“As an artist, you put so much into what you do and it can all be torn down in a nanosecond.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“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.”
― Rufus Wainwright
“My mother’s songs are really turning out to be masterpieces. I have inherited this incredible legacy and am so fortunate to bathe in her sensibilities. It is tinged with tragedy. I’d much rather she was here in person, but there is still a positive force to come out of her death and that is having the gift of music that she gave.”
― Rufus Wainwright
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