Rufus Wainwright

“I think everybody identified at a pretty young age that I was fairly entranced with myself. And that I had to be tempered.”

“The thing I hate most is false modesty. The artists who are, like, 'Oh, you know, I'm really not that good. Oh, I can't believe I'm here.' I find it vaguely sinister, even.”

“Arguably, the relationship between Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland is one of the great mother-daughter sagas of all time. Certainly, for certain people, and a lot of them, Liza is the bigger...”

“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 romanticise...”

“I think the minute you mention death, people run for the hills - unless it's heavy metal. People do not like death.”

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

“Why be in music, why write songs, if you can't use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life? I believe a lot of our lives are spent asleep, and what I've been trying to do is hold...”

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

“After years of hotels, I'm horribly inept at cleaning up after myself.”

“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 a...”

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

“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 t...”

“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 lif...”

“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-...”

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

“I've always gravitated towards opera, and the Royal Opera House is quite possibly the greatest opera house on earth.”

“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.”

“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 -...”

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

“'Prima Donna' is my kind of love song to opera but it's not the full experience.”