Coming Out Quotes

“Only by speaking out can we create lasting change. And that change begins with coming out.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“When we choose to live authentically we chip away at others prisons of pretend and create an opportunity for them to walk out of darkness into freedom.”
― Anthony Venn-Brown, A Life of Unlearning - a journey to find the truth

“So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know.”
― Michael Levenson

“Once," Fran says, settling against the worktable, folding her arms, "I knew this kid who very bravely and bossily came out of the closet when she was only fourteen years old. She told me then that we can't choose who we love. We just love the people we love, no mattter what anyone else might want for us. Wasn't that you?”
― Madeleine George, The Difference Between You and Me

“I'm assuming you didn't just call me to come out of the closet to a blind woman'

'Oh, it's something I do everyday,' Kate said, enjoying Faith's sense of humor. 'I open up a phone book, randomly select a name, dial it, and when they answer, I proclaim I'm a lesbian and then hang up.”
― Laurie Salzler, Positive Lightning

“Here's a queer fact: none among the skeletons in your closet are ‘straight’ so expect them to ‘come out’ very, very soon...”
― Khayri R.R. Woulfe

“The Auden/Kallman relationship had this to be said for it: It affirmed that it's better to be blatant than latent.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“I think the skin revolution for women, I will call it, really all started with Mariah Carey. Madonna was pretty risqué too, but she was pretty much always known as a "bad girl." Mariah was a good girl, supposedly Christian, turning very bad, in the late 90's. So then, all the other little girls and teens and women across America thought it would be ok for them to "come out" too essentially, or flaunt whatever they had. Modesty went completely out the window for many women, starting in the late 90's.”
― Lisa Bedrick, On Christian Hot Topics

“She couldn't tell which was winning out - her utter devastation at Gabriel's lack of support, at the way he'd made her feel so monstrous, of the suspicion that she was monstrous; that is was somehow a dishonorable thing to look at Bridget the way she did, and tha tGabriel was right to have reacted with revulsion. She wanted to scrub it all out. She wanted to back everything she had said and go back to a time when she was still just the sister that Gabriel knew and loved, not this stranger he had looked at with such disappointment.”
― Lex Croucher, Gwen & Art Are Not in Love

“I don't think I'm meant for anyone who wears curlers.”
― Geoffrey Knight, The Boy From Brighton

“Why have I let the world convince me I’m not enough without romance?”
― Alison Cochrun, The Charm Offensive

“It's a shame that you can't even come out to me.”
― Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

“Seeiw: "I was terrified that you'd end our friendship when I told you."
Kung: "Why would I?"
Seeiw: "I'm gay." The curly-haired guy lifts his eyebrows at the person he didn't expect to have this thought.
Kung: "Did I look homophobic to you?"
Seeiw: "Don't other people think it's not normal?"
Kung: "What do you mean by 'other people'?"
Seeiw: "Society."
Kung: "But that's not your society, isn't it?" Kung pokes his friend's forehead. "And don't bring yourself into that kind of society. If someone has that attitude, step back and don't associate with them.”
― afterday everY, My Only 12%

“This kiss is so massively different from the first two. There's no salty taste to this one, no struggling to breathe through hiccuping sobs. No eyes on us, no modesty, no hesitation. But this beautiful hunger, this urgency for closeness, this desire to lap up every sensation we can pull from each other.”
― Carlyn Greenwald, Sizzle Reel

“He says, no son of mine is going to be a faggot.”
― Oluwasegun Romeo Oriogun, Sacrament of Bodies

“I do not know when I started saying things I felt like saying, there was no miracle to my salvation, just a boy walking on a lonely road, walking into other boys who knew salvation lies in raising a home in the wild.”
― Oluwasegun Romeo Oriogun

“Her lips drew me in, bringing me back to that summer. Each and every one of her smiles felt like they were just for me, like we were sharing a secret between friends. And when I’d come out to her and her mouth didn’t curve the way I’d hoped . . . why did I still feel crushed to this day? Yes, I’d lost a friend, but why did it feel like more? Why did it feel so intense?”
― Jenna Miller

“Being queer was like holding the golden ticket to a club nobody wanted to go to. I had no idea that once I blasted down those closet doors, with their bouncers of fear, religion, and internal bias, the club would be lit. The way a party can be when everyone inside finally knows what it means to come home.

My queerness is a Tupperware container (thank god) that nobody will ever find a lid for. A box that cannot be closed. The reclamation of wholeness over goodness, transforming the perpetual misfit into one holy hell of a celebration.

Owning my queerness was like learning the desert floor was once the bottom of the ocean, meaning the towering 200-year-old saguaro watching over me was somehow born underwater. It is the dogged insistence on coloring outside of every single line.

It is the refusal to accept a singular definition that makes the word witch at me finally feel at home in the spaces where words are left behind.

My queerness rests its foundation on a ground named freedom. I speak it loudly because I have the freedom to do so without fear of reprisal or harm. I claim this life of mine under the rainbow and the complexity of the history it has given me fiercely.

To love a woman in a world that said I must not will never be anything but a revolution.

And when I kiss her, trust me, entire galaxies are mine.”
― Jeanette LeBlanc

“I don't want to be gay, but it's never been a choice, and I don't know how to explain that to anyone but Wesley.”
― Tony Keith, How the Boogeyman Became a Poet: A YA Memoir in Verse of a Black, Gay Teen's Journey to Self-Discovery through Poetry

“Everyone's living every damn moment with imposter syndrome, and when I realized that, that was when I came out. I stopped hiding myself, stopped listening when people told me I was wrong, and instead I started standing tall.”
― Jez Cajiao, Age of Glass

“My sexual desires were only a part of me, just like my sexual orientation. I was more than a willing bottom. I was more than a homo. I was a boy who helped his Mom all he could. I was a boy who loved football. I was a boy who kind of liked to fight. There was so much more to me than what happened when I was naked.”
― Mark A. Roeder, Lawn Boy

“I read on.
And soon I realized.
This wasn’t just a story about friendship between two teenage boys.
Never had I ever read anything like this before.
I didn’t even know this existed.
It felt … illegal.
And yet I couldn’t stop reading.”
― SIMON JAMES GREEN; GARRY PARSONS

“Yet, being with him, I realize something. I was missing something myself. I was incomplete. Part of me was empty, and now, with him, it's there. And it feels so good.”
― Simon James Green, Boy Like Me

“I read on.
And soon I realized.
This wasn’t just a story about friendship between two teenage boys.
Never had I ever read anything like this before.
I didn’t even know this existed.
It felt … illegal.
And yet I couldn’t stop reading.”
― Simon James Green, Boy Like Me

“Ik denk aan Marouan. Alweer. En aan het bericht dat ik hem gestuurd heb aan het begin van deze week. Net als jij. Jij bent het waard om voor te vechten. Kennelijk toch niet, want als puntje bij paaltje komt, durf ik het niet aan. Zelfs bij Eline niet. Ook naar mezelf niet. Eerlijk zijn is allemachtig.”
― Hinke van Abbema

“No more folding into someone else's arms
like a polite lie.
Forget making space in my mouth
for words that don't fit.
I think about the women—
all the women—
who felt like the first deep breath
after too many held.
The ones who looked at me
like I was a watery reflection
and finally,
I looked back.”
― Jasmine Farrell, Rising From The Roots

“I’ve got stories under my skin—
women whom I’ve adored in silence,
to whom I’d offer my whole being if they asked.
Peel my heart open like ripe mangos in August
or Post-its left in prayer rooms.
After de-converting, I sought repentance,
relentless in my search for a cure
in a man,
longing for a "he" to dim the light in my eye
that sparkles for curvy silhouettes and sharp tongues.
But I found no one.
My heart ached with an emptiness,
my soul bellowing in darkness
it didn’t need to endure.”
― Jasmine Farrell, Rising From The Roots

“I think I came out to myself eventually in high school, but the church and organized religion definitely didn't help the situation.”
― Emma Goswell, Coming Out Stories - Personal Experiences of Coming Out from Across the LGBTQ+ Spectrum

“There wasn't any physical abuse but there was a lot of emotional abuse. It was a lot of shit to take.”
― Emma Goswell, Coming Out Stories - Personal Experiences of Coming Out from Across the LGBTQ+ Spectrum

“Only come out when you are good and ready.”
― Emma Goswell, Coming Out Stories - Personal Experiences of Coming Out from Across the LGBTQ+ Spectrum