Quotes from Christine and the Queens

Tapping into a more masculine, macho culture, I got in touch with my femininity, but differently. Macho culture is also pride of the body and showing it off - a relationship to theatricality, to construction. It's about owning your narrative again.

When I take risks, I win. When I do the safe thing, it's a disaster.

Grimes is the extreme version of doing everything yourself. I think this is impressive, because she is fiddling with things I couldn't fiddle with, all the technical stuff. I know what I want to do, but I wouldn't do it all my own, I would go crazy. This is insanely hard, to do an album by yourself. But I admire her for that.

I invented Christine as a survival technique. I was inspired by the idea that everyone could have a Christine inside to wake.

I invented 'Christine' as a survival technique to deal with many things. I felt it would save me.

There are lots of ways to be a feminist. Beyonce, for example, is a beautiful example of feminine sensuality and is still really powerful. My character and my inner essence is more like an awkward 15-year-old boy, like a teenager backstage, like, 'Yeah, what's up?' That's what I'm trying to channel.

I know that a song is working when I can properly dance on it.

I've experienced being properly lost in my desires, and it's really influenced my writing.

I always knew I wanted to be a woman in men's clothing because I just feel good like that. I feel like I'm taking a different space: I move differently; I'm more at ease.

I'm kind of resistant to being told no, not being wanted. It fills me with energy.

For me, the male gaze is oppressive. And I hope if we are building a female gaze that it's inclusive, and it's about pure desire and not how I want people to look in order for them to be desired by me.

It's always odd to me when people say, 'Where does Heloise finish and Chris start?' It's the same thing. I'm just putting a theatrical form to my expression.

Christine and the Queens is about not being safe.

Christine and the Queens is born out of a particular moment in my life where I was quite low.

I think, from the beginning, I was healed and inspired by queer culture, and Christine and the Queens, as an idea from the beginning, is queer because it questions the norm.

Queer is about intense questioning that can't be made nice and glossy.

The gender question has always obsessed me.

I broke up with my first girlfriend because I was out of love. I was crushing so hard on her for a whole year, and I finally I got to be with her, and the interest vanished. I'm a terrible person. I was 17, and she was in my class.

I don't remember my 20s as a good place.

If I want to say I'm a man for three minutes, then be it: I'm a man for three minutes.

I love people that are question marks. I love people that don't have answers and are just trying to cope with it. I love people that just don't tick boxes. There is a grace in them I can't really find elsewhere.

I'm going to redefine what it means to be sexy, and it's going to be creepy as hell. Because I could never do the 'sexy' way of being sexy.

I love Lou Reed because his voice sounds like your inner conscience.

I'm in love with artists that are really difficult to cover or to copy. You can only try to copy them, but you will never succeed because it's intertwined with really personal references and really personal ways to exist on stage. They are really strong individuals, and are writing their own songs and know where they want to go.