Rufus Wainwright Quotes

I'm not naive to the fact that I'm an out gay actor.

You can't just put gay in a little gay box anymore.

I had to smile when stories emerged questioning whether I was gay. Obviously I knew I wasn't but people were curiously desperate to suggest I was ... when you know a gay guy has a crush on you, it's the most flattering thing.

I think it's kind of awkward when everyone knows you're gay but you don't say it. I had been thinking about coming out for almost a year before I did. I thought about it seriously on the plane ride home from the World Cup, while I was casually talking to my friend Lori Lindsey. She said, "Dude, you should just come out." She was right. Everyone in my life already knew. If you want to stand up and fight for equal rights but then won't even stand up for yourself and say "I'm gay" - that just started to feel weird.

A lot of people think that telling people you're gay is something someone might say just to get attention.

I'm sure other people in the business have considered reasons why they're doing what they're doing, but I do think that if you're gay you have a responsibility to come out.

When I came out publicly, some photo editors had a field day searching for pictures of me with a limp wrist or some other stereotypical gay signifier - as though, after decades in the public eye, they'd suddenly come across a trove of shots where I looked like a Cher impersonator.

I've become this sort of icon for the gay community. I don't like the position.

All over the country, they're reading about me, and the story doesn't center on me being gay. It's just about a gay person who is doing his job.

As a young girl, there were the obvious messages about what girls could and couldn't achieve. And to compound the limitations I felt being leveled upon me, I realized at the age of nine, that I was gay.

A lot of people thought I was gay.

I knew I had to be the gay stereotype that was on the front of the papers every day. And I did my job well. I played the game.

Part of my struggle with being gay was that a lot of my homophobia was internalized because of the cues that I was - received. I didn't see anybody like myself in the culture. RuPaul was the closest to a gay, out black man that I had growing up.

Part of me didn't know if Australia wanted its champion to be gay.

When people have asked me in the past if I'm gay, I've said "I'm not gay, but I'm festive."

I grew up around gay people my entire life, basically, that’s possibly why I’m quite camp, and some people think I’m gay when I meet them, which I think is awesome. It’s always good to keep them guessing.

I'm not gay, although I wish I were, just to piss off the homophobes.

I knew that I was gay in every bone of my body. So I did the only thing I could do. I started the movement.

I'm not one of these people who thinks everybody's gay.

I hope through The L Word to become an honorary member of the gay tribe. I cherish the thought that some young girl or woman somewhere may one night turn on the television and for the first time ever see her life represented - not as an isolated incident but as a multiplicity. Her overwhelming fear may have been that she might never find her tribe, she might never find love and now she knows that they are both out there waiting for her.

If I was gay, there would be no closet. You would never see the closet I came out of. Why? Because I'd have burned it for kindling by the time I was twelve... If I was gay, at this stage of the game?age 37, aging alternative icon?I'd be taking out ads.

Well, you show me the science [that being gay is not a choice] and I'll be persuaded.

When I came out, when I was 17 years old, it was one of those things where I realized that there was going to be so many obstacles, but being gay doesn't mean being weak. And being gay doesn't mean that you are less than anybody else. It's just who you are.

I posed for a gay magazine, which caused much comment. But it doesn't bother me. Gay people are fighting the same kind of stereotyping that bodybuilders are: People have certain misconceptions about them just as they do about us.

And being gay isn't so easy, either I've always said that if anyone ever thought I was straight they must need glasses - but when I finally came out and said, "Yes, I do sleep with men and I'm gay," yeah, I lost record sales. There's no question - big, big time.