255 Quotes by Rufus Wainwright

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm hyper light-sensitive and must sleep in the equivalent of a sealed tomb.

I'll be honest, I worry sometimes about what I've done. I have tied my whole person to my art and, whatever it takes to get that hook, I will go there and do it.

I've paid the price; I definitely have a reputation that precedes me, and there is a camp that plots my demise. But then again... it's funner that way.

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

We made a pact to light up and then we were whisked away,