Karamo Brown Quotes

People often ask me why I choose to primarily play queer characters, and my answer is that as a queer man, I choose to align myself with projects in which I can be of service for a purpose greater than myself: to be for an audience of queer people of color, something I didn't have the privilege of seeing as a young man.

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.

What we do is provide a suggestion. We say, 'We're queer. We're going to do this; we're going to open up the space to queer thought.' People don't have to show up, but they do.

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 love St. Vincent. She is like our queer rock goddess and that's so needed.

I think the earnestness of what we're saying and what other bands like us are totally saying - or other queer bands - is 'We exist.'

You know, in this industry, being an openly queer actor or entertainer, you can play the game your way, or you can play it the industry's way. And I decided to play it my way. I played it the industry's way far too long.

There are a lot of queers starved for entertainment from their own community.

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.

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.

A lot of my chosen family is black and I say that unabashedly. For anyone who doesn't understand that, they just don't understand me and my generation because especially in the LGBT community, the concept of chosen family is so important and it's a survival tactic.

In order to make a change, I have to exist in a traditionally homophobic space such as hip-hop. If I were to just be this queer rapper who only spoke to queer kids... I don't think I could as effectively make a change for another young, black, queer kid growing up in Texas.

I didn't know Charlie before doing the movie, but I was a huge fan of the British Queer as Folk.

My films might have been queer - because I was - but they were not gay.

When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to.

I love it when novels contain a broad cast of characters, including queer ones.

What I would love is for a normalization of queer characters on TV.

I grew up in a time where there were no queer digital references.

Everyone who passes through 'Drag Race,' and especially the people who are able to have really big careers after the show, has a responsibility to the queer community to do a good job of representing queer people across the board to be kind and loving.

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.

I personally always have a hard time relating to queer characters in media because I didn't really see myself in them. They were kind of pigeonholed early on as the gay character, and they would naturally end up with the other gay character who would emerge at some point as their love interest.

A lot of queer characters get painted with either a caricature brush, or they're used to teach, in a way.

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

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.

I think that there are all these amazing figures in our history - the Bowies, the Tina Turners, the Chers, the people who are, in many ways, genderless or represent 'the other' - and I want pop music, and other queer artists - Kehlani, Perfume Genius - these people are bringing queer narratives into people's minds.