Gus Van Sant Quotes

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

I knew I was different when I was about six years of age but I just knew that I wasn't like everybody else. I mean I wasn't like the other kids. I didn't know what that was. But I guess it was when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I'm like, 'Hey, something's wrong here.'

I didn't have any knowledge of the music industry when I first got to L.A., and I really didn't know on a creative level what I wanted to sound like, so I had to do a lot of experimenting. It led to a spiral of depression and being broke.

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

High school was difficult for me because I was in the thick of dealing with my depression and anxiety.

I had a lot of fear about coming out as a kid.

I wasn't very happy in high school: it was a confusing and sort of sad time for me.

Honestly, I never needed a mask to go onstage. It was me who was there, and it was always what I felt, based on what I had learned at home, in my religion, and from society. I clung to that: 'This is me, it has to be me.' And if I had an encounter with someone of the same sex, I looked away.

I have been suffering for so long and didn't even recognize it. I just stopped doing so many things that I used to love to do due to my pain.

As a kid, I was always mistaken for a girl. Before you reach that age where your sexuality starts to display itself, kids can look very androgynous, and I guess I leaned more toward the feminine. All those things were very hard, growing up, because you're trying to create an identity, and you're feeling shameful about the one that you're making.

When you're a young kid and you're gay, you're out there on your own. And you're trying to figure this thing out. And your parents typically aren't gay.

I think everyone feels lost at times during their high school years.

Fifteen is such a weird age to be. Nobody treats you like an adult, but you desperately want to be one. You still have these childlike aspects, but you're just kind of coming into the world.

Teenagers are asking, 'Who am I?' and 'How do I fit in?' in every aspect of their lives, and the best YA romances appreciate that there is more to a teen's life than finding love.

Coming out was painful, but life got so much better for me.

Adolescence is a plague on the senses.

'Different' is such a good word. For me, ever since I was little, I always felt that something was off. And I just didn't have the resources to - I just didn't know what it was.

I'm asked all the time in interviews about who I am, and I know a few people my age who have a strong sense of self, but I couldn't say I know myself and sum it up and give it to you in a little package. I don't know myself at all yet.

I vividly remember being 14. That was the age when I started to get happy: I started being a writer and stopped being a loser.

I'd never want to go back to being in my twenties or thirties. I was lost and confused and uncomfortable in my own skin.

And I've known people who came out with a sense of torture.

I have a 15-year-old daughter who thinks that I always had this self confidence that I have now at the age of 60. And I always tell her that what she is going through - the low self-esteem as a teenager - that is a right of passage.

Being a teenager is hard.

There's so much bullying with young people and them feeling like they can't come out, and they don't know what to do. And it's something that you have to work through. And, you know, for me, it was - I came out, and then I went back in for a minute. And then I came out, and I was like, 'You know what? This is who I am.'

All my friends were doing just dumb stuff that kids do, like making out with people at parties and starting to date... I didn't know any gay people growing up or any queer people growing up, and so I just really felt alone and kind of lost, and I just wasn't experiencing life.