Rufus Wainwright

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.

Life is a game and true love is a trophy.

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.

I've developed into quite a swan. I'm one of those people that will probably look better and better as I get older until I drop dead of beauty.

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'.

Once illness strikes, you realize there's not a lot of time for you to do what you really need to do. And there's no time like the present.

In the music business, to survive for so long, you have to be able to cut off from your emotions sometimes. And being a father, you're faced with that situation. I know that my father was, with me. I understand why he had to be distant, because to rip yourself away, time after time, is almost more devastating.

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 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.

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

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.

You get to a certain age, and you feel the need to reward yourself just for existing.