When I was young, I took classical ballet lessons, but I wasn't very good at it. It was really frustrating because I wanted to be good at it. When I stopped having lessons, I began to dance and improvise, and I felt more comfortable.
— Christine and the Queens
Music is contagious and everywhere and democratic, and that's what drew me in. I was interested in acting and being a director, but one of the things that bored me about theatre was that it was not accessible to everyone.
I love people that are question marks. I love people that don't have answers and are just trying to cope with it. I love people that just don't tick boxes. There is a grace in them I can't really find elsewhere.
I have an obsession with haters: the great mess of the Internet expressing itself. I love to type my name on Twitter and read everything. It's always enlightening to see what they hate about you: I'm not pretty enough to be on stage, or my music doesn't make any sense. It feels good to read that, like I'm heading in the right direction!
I'm not a pop star. I don't feel like one. I'm always joking that I'm actually an eight-year-old boy dreaming about being a pop star.
It's the strong will of an artist that really inspires me.
When I started to write music, I desperately wanted to relate to people. But when I became famous, I could relate less. I thought, 'Oh, am I trapped in my own creation?' I was really lonely.
I see theatre everywhere, actually. We're all kind of performing a version of ourselves every morning by choosing the clothes and how we appear - but the stage is so emphasising that I really feel comfortable in it.
Sometimes when I travel, I like to find things that relate to where I am.
I love when I dive into lyrics that give me human complexity and intricate narrative.
I'm just drawn to hands.
My words are my sword.
For me, the male gaze is oppressive. And I hope if we are building a female gaze that it's inclusive, and it's about pure desire and not how I want people to look in order for them to be desired by me.
I wish I could change bodies and destinies.
Christine was me wanting to break free. I was tired of being prissy and shrinking and apologising all of the time, so I created a character that could be daring for me.
There's a lack of ambition in politics in terms of what we expect from the government, what it means to have a state.
I'm going to redefine what it means to be sexy, and it's going to be creepy as hell. Because I could never do the 'sexy' way of being sexy.
When I take risks, I win. When I do the safe thing, it's a disaster.
Grimes is the extreme version of doing everything yourself. I think this is impressive, because she is fiddling with things I couldn't fiddle with, all the technical stuff. I know what I want to do, but I wouldn't do it all my own, I would go crazy. This is insanely hard, to do an album by yourself. But I admire her for that.
Christine, as a stage character, is just a way for me to be more daring, to be more out of the box, to be stronger and to use everything that could weigh me down like a fuel, like an energy.
On stage, I feel like I'm invincible, like nothing bad can happen. I can be myself. I feel like I shrink when I'm off stage.
In theater, what I loved were wordless plays and working in silence.
I'm in love with artists that are really difficult to cover or to copy. You can only try to copy them, but you will never succeed because it's intertwined with really personal references and really personal ways to exist on stage. They are really strong individuals, and are writing their own songs and know where they want to go.
I invented 'Christine' as a survival technique to deal with many things. I felt it would save me.
When I read a book, it's Lou Reed's voice narrating it.
Most people know Serge Gainsbourg's 'Histoire de Melody Nelson' album, but what's interesting is that in the early '90s, he actually went into a dark, weird phase that French people don't really like. They consider his music from that time weak. But for me, it's the best.
I think, from the beginning, I was healed and inspired by queer culture, and Christine and the Queens, as an idea from the beginning, is queer because it questions the norm.
If I want to say I'm a man for three minutes, then be it: I'm a man for three minutes.
No one can escape politics. We are all in it. Even if we shy away from it, I just decide to embrace it. And I try to be an ally for other fights.
I'm kind of obsessed with Bruce Springsteen - the T-shirt and jeans look for me is appealing. Prince was great as well. He designed all of his outfits himself and looked exactly how he wanted to look. He was in complete control of his image.
For me, everything is a performance.
When I was young, I would write all the time. Novels, plays, and poems. It's like a disease - my life is filled with fantasies, and I have to write them all down.
I've experienced being properly lost in my desires, and it's really influenced my writing.
When I thought of Christine at first, I was really angry with everything that was given to me as a young girl.
Christine and the Queens is about not being safe.
Every time I think about a girl to motivate me, I think about Grimes. She's one of my heroes.
I remember growing up and feeling all the time not pretty enough, too rude, too loud, taking too much space because precisely I wanted to maybe be bossy and loud and unapologetic and not really smooth all the time, and those were not really qualities that were valued for me.
I love people who go on stage and blossom like a weird flower.
I love sensual women like Beyonce who are very empowering and sexy at the same time, but if it's not what you want to do then you have to say no.
Sometimes, in my adult life, I have memories of when I was young and really scared of being too close to people.
You have to work with your body when you dance; you can't shy away from your physicality. For me, it's really linked to an incandescent way of accepting yourself and projecting. The dancing was at the core from the beginning.
I love Lou Reed because his voice sounds like your inner conscience.
I'm a huge pop music lover. I do love the immediacy, the organic fever that happens when a pop track is so infectious.
Gendered performance is just constant theater.
The character I've created, Christine, is mainly the first attempt for me to escape all the secret injunctions we have as girls all the time. Like, be pretty but be polite. Don't take too much space. All those things that didn't mean anything to me. I just decided to turn them around with my character.
I'm not trying to brag, but if I did expose my life, it would be a good YouTube series.
Fashion is a way to transform yourself. By choosing your own silhouette and shape, you can constantly change who you are.
Before I created Christine, I was actually really girly. Maybe I was trying to hide something, but I was trying too hard to be a girl, and I didn't know what it meant. I was afraid of being myself.
I'm often lost in my dreams.
The first album was a coming-of-age album - I don't like the phrase, but when you listen to it, you can tell I was having a hard time, that I wasn't socially relating to people.
