Alan Cumming Quotes

I'm so proud that now you can exist as a gay man and be an Olympian, and it can be beneficial rather than negative. So it's amazing. And I just think I feel so liberated now that I've been out of the closet for a while, and so I'm free in that I just get to be myself, speak freely, act freely, and I think that I am competing confidently.

I want to make films that make a difference. I want to be out and hope that that will make things better for gay people and for myself. I hope one day I can start to make the kind of projects or be involved with kind of projects that can really make a difference.

My views on equality are pretty obvious. I mean, I did play a highly complex lesbian techno DJ on TV, but I know it's not always easy to come out and tell the world where you stand.

Coming out is the most political thing you can do.

If I don't get a TV show next year because someone looks up my Wikipedia and it says 'openly gay,' then it's worth the risk because I've had so many years being openly gay and proud of myself as a role model.

I think living my happy, open life and showing young gay kids you can be successful, you can have love in your life, you can be a contributing member of society and you can be respected - I think that's it.

Just by the nature of making the choice to be true to who I am, I'm political. Sometimes that's all you need to do: Show up and be black, gay and Christian in America and actually say it out loud. And refuse to let anything or anybody take that away from you.

I grew up looking for myself onscreen and never could find myself. And I believe that I am supposed to be Toula to show people that it's O.K. to be different.

Look, yes, I'm a Muslim woman and I want to bring my community to the table, but I also want to make sure that I'm not being tokenized.

I came out to be on television as a person, as a woman. And this can be a great thing for my community.

To see another fat girl on television, I think, is really powerful. I'm happy to open the doors for a younger generation of fat, black women to be visible, to be seen, to be heard.

As a gay black man, it's important to me to show up - that I'm able to show up as my whole self, in every space that I'm in, because that's how I'm able to be the most true to who I am.

As much as I think that in the future we won't need labels, at the moment they're really important. So I'm making myself embrace that. I truly am proud to be queer. Even watching 'Queer Eye' is something that inspired me to say that. So that's the power of representation.

As a gay man, I think the role of culture is central to how you change politics - culture is politics.

I would advise any gay person that being out in the real sense can never happen too soon.

I'm sure other people in the business have considered reasons why they're doing what they're doing, but I do think that if you're gay you have a responsibility to come out.

I'm a gay black guy. If I can't ask questions without caring what people think of me, who can?

I can't take on all the worries of the world, you know. I can only talk about being gay and being an actor. I'll have to leave those other battles to somebody else.

There's no Hollywood tradition of maybe not telling people that you're gay to protect your future ambitions. The YouTube world is a little unprecedented. I think what people are seeing is that the more true to yourself you are, the more an audience will connect with you.

I'd like to be the role model to teach other people who have Down's syndrome to be actors and actresses and to be themselves and not try to be a big shot.

I know one of the reasons I first started making Youtube videos was because no one looks like me.

I think it is important for someone like me to not run away from who I am but embrace it. LGBT people across the country need to know they have a friend in Congress.

'Glee' is one of the very few mainstream outlets that is giving a voice to communities of people that don't necessarily have a loud voice, specifically the gay community. It gives a really positive and forward statement.

I was horrified when Richard Chamberlain and Rupert Everett said gay actors should stay in the closet. They were saying to people that they should live a lie and not be liberated, to live in fear of being found out.

Now I've devoted my life to making sure that I can be a trailblazer for any other African American kids or any other gay kids or any other kids that just feel weird or uncomfortable and have their own issues and don't know how to express themselves. I want to be like a beacon for those kids now.