Quotes from Rufus Wainwright

I like to make the mundane fabulous whenever I can.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

My cheeks explode when I smile. That's why I have to look so nonplussed.

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.

Let the little fairy in you fly!

I was reared on folk music.

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!

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

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

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.

I have never cooked a meal in my life and always end up paying for dozens of people to eat with me.

Life is the longest death in California.

I personally don't have the ability to lie about my life, for better or for worse.

Certainly in terms of my life - anybody's life - you go through death, childbirth and marriage, glory and defeat, and so on.

There's no life without humour. It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious, and it can make tragic moments bearable.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.