Lionel Blue Quotes

I didn't happen to be one of those gay kids who knew definitively by the time I was 13.

I was conveniently bisexual for a long time, and then I went, 'Come on, who am I kidding?' And I have to say, it was the single biggest step I took toward emotional well-being, to stop feeling like I had to hide who I am.

My depression at the end of Wham! was because I was beginning to realise I was gay, not bi.

Realizing I was gay was a long sort of waking up.

I knew that I was gay, I knew it. I just couldn't see myself as a gay woman, even though that's where my heart was.

Discovering I'm gay just sort of happened much later in life.

In the early '90s, I wrote a play called 'Word of Mouth' in which I played a number of different characters. One was a thirteen-year-old boy who, through a series of diary entries, realizes that he's gay.

When I realised that I had feelings for men as well as women, at first I was worried and frightened, and there was a certain amount of 'Who am I? Am I a criminal?' and so on. It took me a long time to come to terms with myself. Those were painful years - painful then and painful to look back on.

I justified it in so many ways. I had a very, very long and difficult struggle with my sexuality.

What's it like to figure out you're gay and then begin the process of coming out? Well, for most of my life, I felt doomed. I could imagine no path that would allow me to realize my authentic self. I felt the need to lie, even to myself, insisting: I am straight.

I was homophobic because I obviously didn't know that I was gay.

I really didn't talk about my sexuality until I wrote my autobiography.

For some reason, I was deeply ashamed of the theater early on. I think it had to do with this growing sense I was gay, although I couldn't have put a word to it back then.

Sometimes people think I'm gay. A lot of people have asked me if I'm gay. I answer, 'Look, not to my knowledge. But I'm still young, it could be that in the future, I'll find out that I'm gay.'

Coming out as a gay man, it was very much about finding my own identity and dealing with labeling.

I've wondered what my sexuality might be, but I've never wondered whether it was acceptable or not. Anyway, who really cares whether I'm gay or straight?

The gay community just recognizes what their closets are and we straight have to spend years trying to figure out which closet we are trapped in.

The fact is, I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn't be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.

It never occurred to me that I needed to say that I was gay. I simply am. Anyone who knows me or who's been around me ten minutes knows it too.

I came out to myself when I was about 15 or 16, and to my parents when I was 18. When you come out to your parents, that's when it's properly official.

I watched pretty much every coming out video on YouTube that has ever been posted; I watched it in between 14 and a half and 15. Those coming out videos, and those people on YouTube, those brave, brave, brave people on YouTube, without them, I don't know where I'd be.

I like to think that if I were gay I would be out. Rupert Everett-style.

I'm not sure when I first knew that I was gay.

Finding out that I was gay when I was older was a shock and a disappointment.

Being gay is a fundamental part of my being - the core of who I've always been, and the thing that I had repressed and run from all my life.