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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.
Rufus Wainwright
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Rufus Wainwright
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: July 22
Composer
Musician
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Rhinebeck (village)
New York
Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright
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Gilded
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Edward
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Jones
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More quotes by Rufus Wainwright
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
My mother had a lot of parties when I was a child. There'd always be a moment when she would place me on the upright piano and have me sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
Rufus Wainwright
I like to think of myself as a combination of Sid Vicious and Virgil Thompson
Rufus Wainwright
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
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.
Rufus Wainwright
My greatest experiences in the theatre and the most religious experiences in my life - of which going to the opera is one for me - have been with the Romantic composers' repertoire: it's Wagner, it's Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. That era gets me every time.
Rufus Wainwright
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
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
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
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 star. Liza is the more kind of viable legend, shall we say. Then there's the other camp, where Judy is the one.
Rufus Wainwright
I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider. For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust. I've been hanging out a bit with Lou Reed, and he's the complete opposite. He's into technology and is kind of like a toddler, compared to me, who's like an old 19th-century widow or something.
Rufus Wainwright
I just think it's better to have ideas. I mean, you can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier, people die for them, people kill for them.
Rufus Wainwright
Unless I have my aunt or my boyfriend to take care of me, I'm a little pathetic.
Rufus Wainwright
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
As an artist, you put so much into what you do and it can all be torn down in a nanosecond.
Rufus Wainwright
I do not consider myself a guitar player. My father is a guitar player - I'm not.
Rufus Wainwright
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
I will take my coffee black / never snack / hang with the wolves who are sheepish.
Rufus Wainwright
You had to be an over-the-top, demanding, dramatic figure in order to progress as a woman in Europe over the last few hundred years. Now people say, You're being such a prima donna, meaning you're being hard to deal with or crazy. It's a bit sexist.
Rufus Wainwright
I'd be hanging out in my bathrobe all day, stinky, just writing, and my mom allowed me to do this-as long as I was writing songs. She said, 'As long as you're seriously working on music, I'll support you. Don't get a job, because if you work, it will crush you.
Rufus Wainwright