Rufus Wainwright
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.Collection: Morning
Musically I'm able to keep going, because it's not about money and it's not about success. It's a challenge.Collection: Challenges
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.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Mean
My greatest experiences in the theatre and the most religious experiences in my life - of which going to the opera is one for me - have been with the Romantic composers' repertoire: it's Wagner, it's Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. That era gets me every time.Collection: Religious
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.Collection: Careers
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.Collection: Fun
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.Collection: Thank You
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. But it's worth a shot, I think, while I still have cheekbones.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Beauty
Life is the longest death in California.Collection: California
I was in the forest jumping around daffodils while everyone was high on heroin.Collection: Jumping
Mowing your lawn is against nature.Collection: Mowing
Why be in music, why write songs, if you can't use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life?Collection: Song
Once you've fallen from classical virtue, won't have a soul for to wake up and hold you.Collection: Philosophy
The song is about knowing the end result of every situation you're in, and being able to play it out in your mind and see it before it happens. It's about addiction, really, about knowing how it's all going to end up. In that sense, you're watching a movie of yourself all the time - and then you want out of that movie.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Art
I don’t really have a relationship with the guitar; it’s like my slutty lover, whereas I’m married to the pianoCollection: Guitar
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Mother
Certainly in terms of my life - anybody's life - you go through death, childbirth and marriage, glory and defeat, and so on.Collection: Defeat
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.Collection: Jesus
I'll always be a boulevardier. I have an extreme reverence and romantic longing for all that is decrepit and fatalistic.Collection: Longing
I personally don’t have the ability to lie about my life, for better or for worse.Collection: Lying
A diaper is as inspiring as a drink.Collection: Diapers
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.Collection: Attitude
The more hedonistic you were, the better...I very much subscribed to that as a young artist.Collection: Artist
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!Collection: Artist
I have a three-year-old daughter, which makes me more environmentally conscious. For me, it's about the future.Collection: Daughter
The pop world is popular, and it's about what the people want and connecting to the masses, whereas opera, although it was once popular - and I still believe it can be - it has become very elitist and intellectual, but that certainly doesn't sell tickets. It's a struggle, but I've always embraced struggle and thrived off of it, so it's the way my life needs to go.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Ocean
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.Collection: Mother
I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider. For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust. I've been hanging out a bit with Lou Reed, and he's the complete opposite. He's into technology and is kind of like a toddler, compared to me, who's like an old 19th-century widow or something.Collection: Reading
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.Collection: Play
I'm very blessed, mainly because even though my family is mostly in show business, it's really centered around music. My parents were very successful in many ways, but they weren't necessarily top of the charts. We were never wealthy because of music. We always had to work and we always had to struggle a little bit, and I think at the end of the day that's been very good for me, because I have a sense of it being very ephemeral.Collection: Struggle
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.Collection: Growing Up
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Daughter
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.Collection: Lessons
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.Collection: Mean
When I was signed, at the age of 23...the fact that I presented myself as an out gay man was very, very unusual.Collection: Gay
But I want to deepen as an artist, and working with Shakespeare definitely points in that direction.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Crazy
Yes, I'm a homosexual and I like to shock people with glamour.Collection: People
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.Collection: Strong
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Voice
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.Collection: Real