Top 100 Rufus Wainwright Quotes
#1. I really want to work with Rufus Wainwright. Michael Stipe from R.E.M. I would love to work with Kanye West.
Rico Love
#2. I would love to play with Rufus Wainwright. He's one of my favorite songwriters.
Sydney Wayser
#3. Rufus Wainwright is my go-to for any kind of emotion. He's got songs for all of it.
Drake Bell
#4. I like Rufus Wainwright a whole lot. He makes me wanna be even more musical.
Edie Brickell
#5. I'm not a terrible smoker, actually. My major addiction, which is horrible, is straight boys.
Rufus Wainwright
#6. I was in the forest jumping around daffodils while everyone was high on heroin.
Rufus Wainwright
#7. I really do fear that I'm dying I really do fear that I'm dead I saw it in your eyes what I'm looking for I saw it in your eyes what will make me live.
Rufus Wainwright
#10. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#11. Every video I do is over budget by the time I walk on set. I am massively extravagant in my personal habits.
Rufus Wainwright
#12. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#13. Everything I do, I feel is genius. Whether it is or it isn't.
Rufus Wainwright
#14. I bemoan the fact that all my famous friends have places in St. Bart's and I have to go to Montauk.
Rufus Wainwright
#16. I think the minute you mention death, people run for the hills - unless it's heavy metal. People do not like death.
Rufus Wainwright
#17. Certainly in terms of my life - anybody's life - you go through death, childbirth and marriage, glory and defeat, and so on.
Rufus Wainwright
#18. 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
#19. That will to love is very powerful. But it doesn't always win.
Rufus Wainwright
#21. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. I still believe that love is the most powerful force in the world, even though I am yet to experience it fully.
Rufus Wainwright
#26. 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
#28. I may not lead the most dramatic life, but in my brain it's 'War and Peace' everyday.
Rufus Wainwright
#29. 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
#30. Cigarettes and chocolate milk These are just a couple of my cravings Everything it seems I like's a little bit stronger A little bit thicker A little bit harmful for me.
Rufus Wainwright
#31. 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
#32. I have earned hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I can't seem to get to grips with money.
Rufus Wainwright
#33. 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
#34. Guess the world needs both sun And the moon too Sad with what I have except for you.
Rufus Wainwright
#35. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#36. 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
#37. Some people go to Berlin to get more cutting edge; I went and started wearing lederhosen and going to visit baroque palaces.
Rufus Wainwright
#38. 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
#39. 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!
Rufus Wainwright
#40. 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
#41. When I was signed, at the age of 23 ... the fact that I presented myself as an out gay man was very, very unusual.
Rufus Wainwright
#42. And you will believe in love And all that it's supposed to be But just until the fish start to smell And you're struck down by a hammer.
Rufus Wainwright
#43. 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
#44. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#45. I've always gravitated towards opera, and the Royal Opera House is quite possibly the greatest opera house on earth.
Rufus Wainwright
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. I like to sing to Verdi, I like singing to Sibelius, and Mahler maybe.
Rufus Wainwright
#52. 'Prima Donna' is my kind of love song to opera but it's not the full experience.
Rufus Wainwright
#54. It seems like the older I get, the more unreal the world becomes.
Rufus Wainwright
#56. I'd be hanging out in my bathrobe all day, stinky, just writing, and my mom allowed me to do this-as long as I was writing songs. She said, 'As long as you're seriously working on music, I'll support you. Don't get a job, because if you work, it will crush you.
Rufus Wainwright
#57. 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
#58. I've been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I've been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.
Rufus Wainwright
#59. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#60. 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
#61. But I don't even think you hear me at all Under your medieval ceiling behind your biblical wall
Rufus Wainwright
#62. 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!
Rufus Wainwright
#63. The mind has so many pictures Why can't I sleep with my eyes open? The mind has so many memories Can you remember what it looks like when I cry? I'm trying, trying to tell you All that I can in a sweet and velvet tongue But no words ever could sell you Sell you on me after all that I have done.
Rufus Wainwright
#64. 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
#65. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#66. I think my mother, more than anyone, knew the importance of inspiration. If it was occurring, you had to use it.
Rufus Wainwright
#67. I have a three-year-old daughter, which makes me more environmentally conscious. For me, it's about the future.
Rufus Wainwright
#68. My mother and father could not handle even me being gay. We never talked about it, really.
Rufus Wainwright
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. I personally don't have the ability to lie about my life, for better or for worse.
Rufus Wainwright
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. Faith is a bluebird you see from afar, it's for real and as sure as the first evening star. You can't touch it or buy it or wrap it up tight, but it's there all the same, making things turn out right.
Rufus Wainwright
#75. One day you will come to Montauk and see your dad playing the piano And see your other dad wearing glasses Hope that you will want to stay for a while Don't worry I know you'll have to go
Rufus Wainwright
#76. I'll always be a boulevardier. I have an extreme reverence and romantic longing for all that is decrepit and fatalistic.
Rufus Wainwright
#77. 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
#78. I came out of the closet very young, and I had to cut my teeth pretty fast.
Rufus Wainwright
#80. My cheeks explode when I smile. That's why I have to look so nonplussed.
Rufus Wainwright
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. To me, songs come of their own volition - and with an open-ended philosophy.
Rufus Wainwright
#85. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#87. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#88. 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
#90. 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
#91. After years of hotels, I'm horribly inept at cleaning up after myself.
Rufus Wainwright
#92. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#94. 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
#95. Unless I have my aunt or my boyfriend to take care of me, I'm a little pathetic.
Rufus Wainwright
#96. 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.
Rufus Wainwright
#97. 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
#98. As an artist, you put so much into what you do and it can all be torn down in a nanosecond.
Rufus Wainwright
#99. 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
#100. 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
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