Russell Tovey Quotes

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

As a child, recognizing my difference from other kids, I went to the local public library to try to better understand my reality. Back then, many library card catalogues didn't even list 'homosexuality' as a topic.

I am camp. Lots of gay men can't cope with their campness. They are in denial about it.

Because society places a value on masculinity, gay men aspire to it. If you go to a gay club and the doorman says, 'You do realise this is a gay club, don't you lads?' you get all excited because you think, 'Wow, he thought I was straight!'

I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn't.

I'm on the younger end of Gen X, and for me, growing up gay was not cool.

Being gay, you're kind of forced to ask, I suppose, very existential questions from a very, very early age. Your identity becomes so important to you because you're trying to understand it, and, I think, from the age of, like, 9, you're being forced to ask questions... that other kids maybe don't have to ask.

Any gay man in America redeals a deck at some point.

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.

I now realize that I am a gay man before anything else. Other gays may think they're a Jew first, or black, or a banker, but I'm gay.

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.

Coming out is the most political thing you can do.

I didn't want that 15 minutes of fame moment like, 'Oh, she said she was gay.'

People come up to me in pubs - gay pubs, mind you - and can't believe that I'm gay.

I've heard other gay people say when they were growing up they felt 'foreign.' Growing up, I was able to label these feelings as: 'I'm a Protestant.' It wasn't until I left, I thought: 'Oh, those weren't Protestant feelings.'

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 always knew I was gay. I always knew that somehow it would work out.

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.

If you look at my life before I went into television, the struggle I went through coming out would be surprising to most people, given how comfortable and how out I am being the only late-night gay talk-show host.

I didn't know what gay was until I lived in New York for 10 years. You know, I was just underexposed in that regard.

I thought about being gay, but it didn't fit.

I am comfortable being gay. Most of my adult life, it's never been a secret. I knew I was gay when I was in high school. I am just fortunate I have lived in two of the most gay-friendly places in the world: New York and London.

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.

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.

It's important for me to talk about my life as a gay man, not gay themes per se, in my work.