Olly Alexander Quotes

There were interesting ways that queerness could hide out and get played out pre-Stonewall. It is part of a vast history that is getting forgotten quickly as we trumpet forward into gay marriage and gays in the military and a much different cultural attitude toward gay lives.

When I meet gay kids and they know who we are, I remember that's amazing because literally every gay person in every gay story I knew growing up was doomed to die. There weren't any positive gay stories and it's incredible that has changed.

My brownness is something that I can't hide. There are some straight-acting or straight-passing queer people out there, but I'm not one of them. This is something I would rather not have to hide.

A lot of artists I like end up being queer. Or maybe it's a subconscious thing that you can identify of, like, 'Oh this person understands the nuances of the romantic narrative of a queer person, or the social narrative of a queer person.' And then you discover, lo and behold that they are a queer person.

The stories I grew up with, whether it came to queer representation or representation of anyone that was different, it was always a story of, like, very sad, usually ended up with somebody dying, and it made the idea of being queer or different really scary, actually.

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

I grew up when people were afraid to 'come out' as gay. If you asked me how many gay kids I grew up with or went to school with, I would have said none - which of course could not have been true. The truth is I have no idea how many confused and frightened kids I grew up with. They are still out there.

There are still parts of the country where it's hard: when you realize you're gay, it's like a death sentence.

The term 'new queer cinema' and the films of mine that were associated with that term are from a very, very different time, one almost entirely defined by the AIDS era. It was a very different social and cultural regard for the lives, the experiences, the worth of gay people.

I read everything and anything related to being queer. I found solace in reading authors like Audre Lorde and bell hooks, who would become my activist staples - their words helped me grow up and taught me how to be bold and courageous. By studying them, I came to understand that being young and queer and black would not be easy.

As an actor, it was important to me to play gay characters because, growing up, it was something I never really saw done on television and in film, and I was questioning why there weren't more people like me.

Shows like 'Empire'... one of the most profound powerful things is that there's a gay male character who is loved. That character is going to save a lot of people's lives. Black families are confronting the idea that a gay black character can be human.

When you're a queer person put in the spotlight, you're supposed to have all the answers.

After the 'Fallon' set, I had a lot of queer people message me about how much it meant to see a queer perspective on late night TV.

I would like to encourage hip hop artists to invite those of us who are in the queer spaces in, so we can have those conversations. I love hip hop. If you bring me in the studio, I know how to act. And we can talk about what's not cool because, clearly, there's still homophobia that penetrates in all these areas.

Historically a publicly unaccepted but incredibly rich culture, queer love was only able to exist privately for a long time, expressed in society through coded art forms.

As a person who doesn't identify as straight, any love song I write is contextualized by a queer identity.

We must be vigilant in sharing our stories and our truths as queer parents of color at every chance we get if we hope to see art imitate real life.

I feel like Hollywood likes to use gay people to tell either really sad gay stories starring straight actors, or everything's about a struggle. Everything's about coming out. Nothing was about just living and breathing as a human being who happens to be gay.

I think a lot of gay kids in the midwest or in places not in New York have to overachieve in order to sort of get through the fear of what they're going through.

George was adamant his sexuality should be kept under wraps, which created a wholly unwelcome extra level of stress for him to manage.

I get a real thrill for being 'overtly queer' in my aesthetic.

I won't do press anymore unless I can talk about the homophobia and let queer people know our ideas are mainstream.

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 think, from the beginning, I was healed and inspired by queer culture, and Christine and the Queens, as an idea from the beginning, is queer because it questions the norm.