Vikram Seth Quotes

What's it like to figure out you're gay and then begin the process of coming out? Well, for most of my life, I felt doomed. I could imagine no path that would allow me to realize my authentic self. I felt the need to lie, even to myself, insisting: I am straight.

The gay thing has always been hard for me.

I knew that I was gay, I knew it. I just couldn't see myself as a gay woman, even though that's where my heart was.

I came out when I was 17. I was in the church; I was crying every Sunday for about a year. I came to terms with the fact with this is who I was - I wasn't going to be able to be a different person. At 17, you feel like a freak already, and so to have that fire and brimstone against your attraction is just screwed up!

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.

I think for a long time I wasn't really out to myself growing up in Omaha, Neb., to a Catholic conservative family. It took me a while to come out to myself, and not long after that, I came out to them. I think that it really couldn't have been a better experience. They were all immediately supportive.

I've been uncomfortable dealing with my identity since I was 16 years old.

I was conveniently bisexual for a long time, and then I went, 'Come on, who am I kidding?' And I have to say, it was the single biggest step I took toward emotional well-being, to stop feeling like I had to hide who I am.

When I was with Ellen, I was telling people, If you come out, it's gonna be better for you. But I honestly don't know that.

I'm a lesbian. Yup. Hundred percent. Hundred percent. I remember being in college, and I had fallen in love with this woman, and I remember sitting in my dorm room saying out loud to myself, like, 'You have enough problems. You are not gonna let this happen.'

The most important thing for me was to never, ever, ever deny it. But I didn't really have the courage to talk about it. I was thinking, The people who need to know I'm gay know.

I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sexuality. I was gay.

I justified it in so many ways. I had a very, very long and difficult struggle with my sexuality.

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.

The writing was so clearly written on the wall about me, but I didn't see it. I had no role models. I didn't know there was even a possibility of being gay. I battled with it, but this was the way God made me. If you have a problem with it, take it up with the man upstairs.

If I remember back to when I wasn't open about my sexuality, I spent a great deal of time worried about it.

I was a gay kid who didn't know I was a gay kid, which was really challenging because you think there is something wrong with you until you understand what it is.

It was my own internalised homophobia. I didn't want to be gay.

I used to be scared of people thinking I was gay but now I'd be shocked if they didn't.

I really brought that with me: that people think gay people are disgusting... I remember thinking, 'Okay, I might be gay. But I won't tell anybody. Nobody will ever know.'

You live with the fear people might find out. Then you actually have the courage to tell people and they go, I don't think you are gay. It's enough to drive you crazy.

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.

There was a period when I had a hard time reconciling all the different parts of me in a way that I thought would make sense to others.

My depression at the end of Wham! was because I was beginning to realise I was gay, not bi.

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.