Rufus Wainwright Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

My dad and I have always been somewhat competitive.

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

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 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?

I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider.

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 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 was reared on folk music.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I have a good face for what I do.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

Life is the longest death in California.

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

Why be in music, why write songs, if you can't use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life?

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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