Quotes from Perfume Genius

I've definitely met some people that cultivated a masculinity that they taught themselves. I don't know how they figured out how to do it, but I couldn't.

I keep making the music I do because I feel very purposeful about making things that would be helpful or quell some loneliness in people. I really needed that when I listened to music growing up and even now, so I don't mind that sense of duty.

The thing is everything is good at the Cheesecake Factory. Everything's good. It's science-based. It's a formula; there's math. It's all good!

I don't feel like I make sense in the world. I don't feel like I look right. I don't feel like I act right or do right. It's very frustrating to me that I just walk around with this all the time.

When I first started making music, I wrote the lyrics first, but now, because the music has got kind of wilder, I've flipped it.

To me, when something's really funny, there's, like, a wildness to it, and it's very close to the wildness of something potentially tragic or gross. It's all very close to each other when you have that extreme level of feeling.

Loved 'Get Out,' super good from start to finish. I mean, it had everything you'd want in a movie. It was funny, scary, and it wasn't stupid. It was a smart movie but not in a fussy way. It was so good.

My kitchen witch hangs above the sink in my kitchen. Some people think it's specifically so that you don't burn food when you cook, but I like to think that it's warding off evil spirits and bad things in general.

My mom is not religious, but she's a very spiritual, magical kind of lady. One time, when I was younger, my mom said she was a witch and that my grandmother was also a witch. It was late at night, and she was really sleepy, but I took it very seriously because I always wanted to go to Hogwarts.

I went off at a person who threw a plastic thing at one of my shows once. After I shamed them, I realised it was a little lipstick and felt bad for days.

I wasn't a hoarder, but I was on my way. I went to thrift stores and never didn't buy something. A lot of cat figurines, needlepoint, afghans. Grandma stuff, I suppose.

Everything I do is rebellious. Sometimes even against myself.

If I drink coffee, I have to turn the lights off and lay down. I can't handle it.

I think people have a hard time dealing with a bunch of things at once. They can't have something be disturbing and funny at the same time. They can't have that kind of combination. Which is weird to me because I feel complicated about most things.

I like to have fun! And everything that's good for you is not fun, and that bores me.

I feel like I've figured out the way that I can talk about things that are important to me and have my music and the way of performance be healing and be helpful.

I'm pretty sure I would have managed to over-share no matter what time period I was born in. It's a family thing, too.

I'm very sensitive - I'll cry during every movie or commercial - but when it comes to my own feelings, I don't really think about them that much unless I'm making music. Otherwise, I'm either checked out or laughing because that's how I do regular stuff. I have a hard time talking about my feelings.

I do not work out regularly, but I do dance so much and jump around so much on stage, and I do it every day, so I feel like that's my exercise.

I am a shy person.

Any tragic memory I have I also think is really funny. On any given day, I can think about how horrible something is and also how ridiculous and over-the-top it is.

I like Yoda. I like the Ewoks.

I feel trapped in my body. I want to be like like Scarlett Johansson in 'Lucy,' when she unlocks everything within her - I want to do that. I want to be the alien in 'Arrival' - a spitty, infinite-time-loop creature.

I've had people send messages that said, 'I'm sorry how I treated you in high school.' It was just through kindness. I still think of the world the same way I did growing up. When I got hurt, I decided that this is how people are. But the world is changing, and even those people have changed. And I have. I need to let go, too.