Rufus Wainwright Quotes

When I first came up with the lines, I don't know what it is, but you got to do it/ I don't know where to go but you got to be there, I was at this party for The Strokes in New York. There was this prevailing sense of, 'We're not quite sure what's happening or what is cool, but we know that it's somewhere around here, in this room.' It was this vague confusion, with everybody kind of sniffing for blood. It wasn't that it was a bad party, or that I don't like The Strokes; I just think there's a lot of confusion right now in the music business. Then, later on, I realized the song was really personal. I didn't know where I was, and I didn't know I was actually lost. It wasn't about the party at all; it's about searching but not knowing what you're searching for. There's the train motif, being on this train heading for either oblivion or salvation – and just holding on for dear life. That song came down from some mountain somewhere, because it was right after I wrote it that I sort of packed it in.

I did go from wanting to be someone now
I'm drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue.

Putting all of my time
In learning to care
And a bucket of rhymes
I threw up somewhere
Want a locket of who
Made me lose my perfunctory view
Of all that is around
And of all that I do.

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

These are just the rules and regulations
Of the birds, and the bees
The earth, and the trees,
Not to mention the gods, not to mention the gods.

Yes, I'm a homosexual and I like to shock people with glamour.

You broke my heart, Danny boy
Not your fault, Danny boy
I was had at the doorstep
Played, like a two to a four-set
Had, like poor Job in the bible by God.

But I don’t even think you hear me at all
Under your medieval ceiling behind your biblical wall

The song is about knowing the end result of every situation you're in, and being able to play it out in your mind and see it before it happens. It's about addiction, really, about knowing how it's all going to end up. In that sense, you're watching a movie of yourself all the time – and then you want out of that movie.

Grief is unexplainable. My mother has now been dead for 10 years. I only put my grief for her on the shelf when about five years had gone by. I felt as if I’d passed my exams. I had grieved enough, it was time to live again. And it felt like that for the next five years. But this Christmas I got the worst whiplash. It all came back out. I’m doing better now, but it was horrific. Leonard Cohen warned me it would be hard. He told me that, despite his mother having passed away many years previously, in his late 70s she was almost more present than ever.

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

I really need to know
I may just never see you again, or might as well
You took advantage of a world that loved you well
I'm going to a town that has already been burnt down
I'm so tired of you, America.

Even if the sun, it is blazing
Even if the snow, it is raging
All the elements, we must conquer
To get to the other side of town.

The mind has so many pictures
Why can't I sleep with my eyes open?
The mind has so many memories
Can you remember what it looks like when I cry?<p>I'm trying, trying to tell you
All that I can in a sweet and velvet tongue
But no words ever could sell you
Sell you on me after all that I have done.

I’ve always been an old soul. I started drinking when I was very young. I got into opera when I was 13. I sought out older musicians. It’s as if I have always been trying to accelerate my life. It’s not that I found people my own age unstimulating. There was just something about always being the youngest kid in the room when I was growing up.