Gus Kenworthy Quotes

I realized so much of my college years were spent not wanting to be gay. I just imagined how different it would be if I were going through that experience in 2016 as opposed to 1984.

Being gay facilitated my capacity for shame. As a child, I carried around this thing that gradually became this big dark secret. When I came out in a newspaper interview at 30 I was expecting the reaction the following day to be like the climax of 'Dead Poets Society,' but actually no one really cared.

Says he, 'I am a handsome man, but I'm a gay deceiver'.

When I was I younger I didn't want to be gay. Not because I was scared of the sexual thing; I didn't want to be a clone. Now this was in the late '70s.

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

I was a gay kid who didn't know I was a gay kid, which was really challenging because you think there is something wrong with you until you understand what it is.

I really brought that with me: that people think gay people are disgusting... I remember thinking, 'Okay, I might be gay. But I won't tell anybody. Nobody will ever know.'

Sedaris, in his essay in the It Gets Better book, writes that when he was growing up nobody called him gay because you might as well have called him a warlock. Nobody knew what gay was.

I've been bisexual for as long as I can remember. I remember being made fun of in junior high for that. It was something that was shameful, and it really shouldn't be.

I don't think closeted homosexual morticians have the market cornered on self-loathing or sense of shame.

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.

I was raised thinking I'd burn in hell for being gay, but I didn't have a choice. It's just who I am.

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.

I know growing up as a young gay person how much you hate yourself, how much you already think you're different.

The truth is, I probably would be dead if I had become a star, because at that point I was so closeted and so afraid of people of finding out I was gay. There was no telling what would have happened.

I wanted so badly to be straight like my friends. But I couldn't change it any more than I could change having brown eyes. And I knew I would never fit into what kids thought was normal.

Some women can't say the word lesbian... even when their mouth is full of one.

I was terrified about people knowing I was gay. I'd cringe inside at the idea that they'd be talking behind my back.

It was my own internalised homophobia. I didn't want to be gay.

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.

I used to hate myself for being gay. I couldn't come to terms with it.

A lot of people thought I was gay.

I'd gone through life being obsessed about my sexuality. People would ask about relationships, girlfriends, you start referring to people as 'they' so there's no judgment and you can be ambiguous. People around me knew, but I still struggled with talking about it openly.

I used to be scared of people thinking I was gay but now I'd be shocked if they didn't.

I knew from a very, very early age that I was gay, although in the social environment in Venezuela, you don't ever let that be known.