176 Quotes About Coming-out

What happens when we say something out loud? Does it become more real? Is it any less really when we keep it to ourselves?

Have you ever accidentally swallowed a piece of celery without chewing? The feeling of its weight lodged in your throat, scraping its way down. You think you’re gonna choke, but your throat takes over and digests it, and it takes all the wind out of you. You need to lie down, catch your breath, maybe even take a nap. That’s how it feels to come out each time.

To anyone who has discovered they aren’t as straight as they thought they were, and to the people who made them realize it.

That awkward moment when you realize you’ve been making gay jokes in front of your gay kid for the last 17 years.

Because the truth is always hard. Because being queer is hard, and coming out is hard, and it never stops being hard. The world keeps shoving into you. But you stand tall anyway. You take up space anyway.

I know that what I've written has probably given the impression that I was a haughty young boy, a bit too delicate for the world (and no doubt I was, at least in part). But looking back on it, I think it was simply a fear of crowds, their movements, the inherent potential to transform into a mob, that pushed me toward this misanthropy.

Maybe it's coming out of the closet with all of it, knowing even when the truth isn't hopeful the telling of it is.

Instead of being able to go out and buy a book about a closeted gay kid who's scared of becoming a stereotype while coming to terms with being gay that could have helped me understand what I was going through, I' needed to write my own.

I didn't have to listen to a specific type of music or dress in a particular clothes or act a certain way, because being queer wasn't the nucleus of who I was, it was simply a modifier. I could be a conservative lawyer and queer; I could be an Olympic athlete or a famous comedian or the CEO of the richest company in the world. I could be me, and I'd find a place to belong.