Dee Rees Quotes

Deep down, my mom had long suspected I was gay... Much of her anger and hurt came from her sense of betrayal that she was the last to be told.

Once we got signed, I moved out of my house because I was having teenage issues with my mom. It really wasn't my fault, looking back. You know, I'm gay; it's weird. It was one of the things. She has no problem with me being gay, but she had a problem with me dressing the way I do at first.

My dad was a very conservative Republican businessman, so obviously I considered it a problem when I realized I was a lesbian.

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.

My mother and father could not handle even me being gay. We never talked about it, really.

I was never honest. My father died, and I had never said to him, 'I'm gay.' I knew what I was, but I had to pretend not to be that to avoid the beatings.

One of my best friends since I was eleven years old is a gay man, and I knew his struggle. It was a tough life, you not accepting yourself.

I had told one of my friends that I felt like I might be gay or that I just wasn't into girls, and I was abandoned.

When you're young and queer and closeted, you can end up in this place where you regard your straight peers as the enemy.

You know, I'm gay and I grew up being aware of that at a very early age, in a fairly repressed family.

I think as far as I've been able to understand from my friends that I went to college with and things like that is that it almost seems like Russian Roulette when you're coming out of the closet to your parents.

It wasn't a secret that I was gay. I'd come out to my parents during my junior year of high school, on the day that I also wrecked the family car.

When I was 16, I knew I was gay. I loved a lot. But I lived as a straight guy, because there are people in my town who don't understand my story. I never told. I never wanted to show what was inside my heart.

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.

My mother thought me being gay was a death sentence.

How can my son not be straight after all I've said and done for him?

The real demon in my life is my father.

In the past, kids didn't tell their parents they were gay, so there were never the bust-ups. Some parents react so strongly to the news that their children are gay that the reaction is, 'Get out of our house.' There's a residue of old prejudices that are going to die hard.

In my work with young Jewish adults in the gay community, I hear their stories of discrimination, of struggling for acceptance, of feeling invisible not for what they have done but simply for who they are.

Remember that I was out of the closet at the age of sixteen. My parents knew I was gay; I'd had to tell them.

I don't know, maybe my sons will be gay.

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.

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.

There's so much bullying with young people and them feeling like they can't come out, and they don't know what to do. And it's something that you have to work through. And, you know, for me, it was - I came out, and then I went back in for a minute. And then I came out, and I was like, 'You know what? This is who I am.'

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