Rufus Wainwright Quotes

Each character represents a different color on the big palette of what this ultimate painting is going to look like, who your guy is, and just try to be as honest and simple and real as you can possibly be. The outer trappings are incidental - costumes, period, makeup - all of that is rather insignificant at the end of the day.

I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Of course, I write. I have stories to tell. But I don't want to do superficial stuff any more.

I feel like the job of an artist is to confront their own darkness and their own demons and fears. And I want to make movies that feel human up on the screen. I don't really relate to dudes wearing spandex and capes.

You can't mass produce somebody's heart and soul. It's a very delicate thing.

Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.

If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.

Lena Dunham or Miranda July, those people are sort of thinking about their work in a slightly different way than I do, where their whole body is a seed of what they're creating. I can't imagine watching Miranda's movies with anybody else playing her role, she's so integral. But for me, it feels more like every story is really individual. If I thought of something else, or thought it should be my body representing it, I'd fold my body into it. But most of the time I'm writing to get something out of my body.

I write poems for myself and I write poetry that gets torn apart and becomes songs. I have a lot of respect for words, the power of words.

Experiences that banish irony are much better for living than for writing.

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

I think Shakespeare got drunk after he finished King Lear. That he had a ball writing it.

My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.

I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvelous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.

Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.

I think "artistic" simply means there's more of the creator in the thing. Whether it's painting or song or movie or game, the creator puts more of themselves into the piece, so when the audience see it, they feel something real, they feel something human, they feel something that's like a person.

That's just a part of being an artist: you can't write great stuff all the time, because if you did, then you'd be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.

The only question that nobody ever asks is: What breaks your heart? I think that should be asked of all "artists."... So, what breaks your heart?

One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life. I still feel surprised that such various substances can find shelter and nourishment in a poem. A poem in fact may be a sort of nourishing liquid, such as one uses to keep an amoeba alive. If prepared right, a poem can keep an image or a thought or insights on history or the psyche alive for years, as well as our desires and airy impulses.

Fool," said my muse to me. "Look in thy heart and write.

People think once you get famous and rich you move out of the public sphere and you have nothing left to write about. I've heard that - Bruce Springsteen was this real street boy, now he's got this big house. How does that compute? If you don't look at the material side of someone's life, if you look at more the emotional side, there's always a wealth of stuff to write about.

Writers on the subject of August Strindberg have hitherto omitted to mention that he could not write. ... Strindberg, who was neither a good nor a wise man, had a stroke of luck. He went mad. He lost the power of inhibition. Everything down to the pettiest suspicion that the dog had been given the leanest mutton chop, poured out of his lips. Men of his weakness and sensuality are usually, from their sheer brutishness, unable to express themselves. But Strindberg was mad and articulate. That is what makes him immortal.

Actors in any capacity, artists of any stripe, are inspired by their curiosity, by their desire to explore all quarters of life, in light and in dark, and reflect what they find in their work. Artists instinctively want to reflect humanity, their own and each other's, in all its intermittent virtue and vitality, frailty and fallibility.

There's definitely some pieces in there that reflect on my personal life, but really, they aren't as personal as everybody thinks they are. I would like them to be more personal. The emotions, the songs themselves are personal. I can't do it - I've tried to write personally and it just doesn't seem to work. It would be too obvious. Some things that you could read in could fit into anyone's life that had any amount of pain at all. It's pretty cliche'.