Top 120 Rufus Wainwright Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

52. “Yes, I’m a homosexual and I like to shock people with glamour.”

— Rufus Wainwright

53. “I like to make the mundane fabulous whenever I can.”

— Rufus Wainwright

54. “Places that have experienced great defeat experience a kind of rebirth, which I think America has to do – unless we want to get more decrepit. I don’t think we have to destroy the place totally.”

— Rufus Wainwright

55. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

56. “Everything I do, I feel is genius. Whether it is or it isn’t.”

— Rufus Wainwright

57. “One day you will come to Montauk and see your dad playing the piano And see your other dad wearing glasses Hope that you will want to stay for a while Don’t worry I know you’ll have to go.”

— Rufus Wainwright

58. “My dad and I have always been somewhat competitive.”

— Rufus Wainwright

59. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

60. “I was in the forest jumping around daffodils while everyone was high on heroin.”

— Rufus Wainwright

61. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

62. “Some people go to Berlin to get more cutting edge; I went and started wearing lederhosen and going to visit baroque palaces.”

— Rufus Wainwright

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

— Rufus Wainwright

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

— Rufus Wainwright

65. “I’m hyper light-sensitive and must sleep in the equivalent of a sealed tomb.”

— Rufus Wainwright

66. “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!”

— Rufus Wainwright

67. “I have a three-year-old daughter, which makes me more environmentally conscious. For me, it’s about the future.”

— Rufus Wainwright

68. “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!”

— Rufus Wainwright

69. “I have an ounce of Lady Gaga’s full-bodied ambition.”

— Rufus Wainwright

70. “I’m not born again, I’m not Kabbalah, God forbid, but I did have an experience hitting 30 that I needed to lean on something that assured me that everything is going to be okay. I had to regain a lot of my belief in fairy tales, in happy endings.”

— Rufus Wainwright

71. “There’s prejudice everywhere. I don’t think the music industry is as bad as the movie industry. But I have taken a few hits over the years for my sexuality, and for being honest about my life. In the end, it’s the music that rules the roost.”

— Rufus Wainwright

72. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

73. “I like to think of myself as a combination of Sid Vicious and Virgil Thompson.”

— Rufus Wainwright

74. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

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

— Rufus Wainwright

76. “It seems like the older I get, the more unreal the world becomes.”

— Rufus Wainwright

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

— Rufus Wainwright

78. “I’ve written songs for Shirley Bassey, Marianne Faithfull, and Linda Thompson. I sort of focus on these wonderful, aging divas. But maybe that’s because I think I’m Christina Aguilera.”

— Rufus Wainwright

79. “I have a lot of advantages: I’m not addicted to horrifying pills. I also have surrounded myself with far more caring and upright individuals. And I wasn’t abused as a child, so I’m doing okay!”

— Rufus Wainwright

80. “My mother and father could not handle even me being gay. We never talked about it, really.”

— Rufus Wainwright

81. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

82. “One of the main destructive forces within our family has been these runaway egos. I think if you look at any show business family, that struggle exists.”

— Rufus Wainwright

83. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

84. “I am regarded as a usurper, as an imposter and dilettante, because I do technically come from the wrong side of the tracks in musical terms.”

— Rufus Wainwright

85. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

86. “Guess the world needs both sun And the moon too Sad with what I have except for you.”

— Rufus Wainwright

87. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

88. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

89. “I’ve been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I’ve been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.”

— Rufus Wainwright

90. “I like to sing to Verdi, I like singing to Sibelius, and Mahler maybe.”

— Rufus Wainwright

91. “Certainly in terms of my life – anybody’s life – you go through death, childbirth and marriage, glory and defeat, and so on.”

— Rufus Wainwright

92. “I definitely consider ‘Poses’ – the whole album in fact – to be kind of a miracle. Like the last breath of that moment when decadence is healthy, ‘Poses’ encapsulates that feeling. It’s a kind of song and a kind of album that I’ll never be able to repeat.”

— Rufus Wainwright

93. “I was reared on folk music.”

— Rufus Wainwright

94. “For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust.”

— Rufus Wainwright

95. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

96. “The artist who gave me the most inspiration and direction, especially as a singer – and I absolutely consider myself a singer, 100 percent – is Nina Simone. She’s my ultimate pianist-singer-type person.”

— Rufus Wainwright

97. “Writing an opera and premiering in England, you could say I was going right into the eye of the storm and I came out successfully. A little tattered and bruised, but so what, I made it.”

— Rufus Wainwright

98. “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.”

— Rufus Wainwright

99. “When it came to using elements of your personal life in your work, my mother was the master, or the mistress. There were three or four songs she wrote about my father – songs about failed love.”

— Rufus Wainwright

100. “But I want to deepen as an artist, and working with Shakespeare definitely points in that direction.”

— Rufus Wainwright