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.

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.

Every time I think about a girl to motivate me, I think about Grimes. She's one of my heroes.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

In theater, what I loved were wordless plays and working in silence.

It's the strong will of an artist that really inspires me.

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.

Sometimes, in my adult life, I have memories of when I was young and really scared of being too close to people.

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 invented 'Christine' as a survival technique to deal with many things. I felt it would save me.

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 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.

When I read a book, it's Lou Reed's voice narrating it.

I love Lou Reed because his voice sounds like your inner conscience.

Sometimes when I travel, I like to find things that relate to where I am.

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'm a huge pop music lover. I do love the immediacy, the organic fever that happens when a pop track is so infectious.

I love when I dive into lyrics that give me human complexity and intricate narrative.

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.

I'm just drawn to hands.