Queer Quotes

Music spoke to me when I was young in such an intimate, empowering, magical way, and I think that music is already doing that for young queer kids.

I think that’s what happens when drag starts to go mainstream: All of a sudden, you’re watching ‘The View’ and there are three drag queens on there and it’s not a joke. Yes, we’re here, we’re queer and you better deal with it. ‘Cause we ain’t going nowhere.

When it comes to drag, my favorite thing we can do is kind of push against the beauty standards of magazines. We don’t need to look like supermodels. That what really makes drag special and makes it unique and makes it queer.

A friend told me about the casting notice for ‘Queer Eye.’ I was in Chicago and I had a contract with ‘Esquire’ magazine, so had been coming to New York City regularly and thought I’d catch a cheap flight, crash on a friend’s sofa and do this hilarious audition that I had no chance of winning.

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 hope ‘Hellcat’ is picked up again in years to come by people who realize just how queer it is: not just in its characters but its sensibility.

‘Moonlight’ is a story that hasn’t been told. Whether placed as queer black cinema or urban male cinema, the lack of coming-of-age films featuring people like Chiron and set in places like inner-city Miami is pronounced and unfortunate.

Queer art is as much about starting conversations as it is about making dramatic statements.

I wouldn’t want to lose out on my macho action movie just because I told people I was queer.

I’m absolutely looking at my career differently, but it’s still really important to some sense of connection to where I came from, which is this DIY, queer work ethic and sensibility.

I’m still figuring it all out, and I think everyone is. And that’s kind of the point is that there’s no fixed identity, especially for like people in the queer community. It’s going to be an ongoing journey, but yeah, I hope that sharing it helps people.

That’s the beauty of ‘Queer Eye’ coming back. No matter how far you think we’ve come as a society, there’s still work that needs to be done.

Drag Race’ was, like, my outlet and finally being able to see myself in television and that was through Manila Luzon, who was a ‘Drag Race’ contestant. Manila was the first Asian queer person that I ever saw on mainstream media and ‘Drag Race’ really did that for me.

Encourage your friend and family member who are queer parents of color to post their stories and share it with the world. It’s time for us to be seen.

I knew that I wanted to primarily play queer characters.

If queer people are nothing, we are strong.

I’m so unmaterialistic in every way. If you saw my apartment, it would explain a lot, I think. It’s not so much a mess, but it just needs to have some feng shui or a real ‘Queer Eye’ makeover or whatever.

The only queer people are those who don’t love anybody.

I love it now that a large minority of people who are handicapped prefer to call themselves crippled. This is all part of the game, like queer theory.

I am an ‘other.’ As a queer, biracial man who occupies and embodies many different intersections of ‘otherness,’ I’ve spent my entire life seeking reflections of myself in the world around me to connect and relate to.

Queer Eye is a makeover show, meant to help our straight brethren.

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.

Queer is invincible because people have tried everything – haven’t they? What haven’t they tried to do to queer people? And horrible things happened. But you never stop, because it’s the truth of who you are.

And ‘Queer Eye’ is fascinating. It has a pinch-me-I’m-dreaming quality. It’s very bourgeois, of course, and much more about the liberation of the consumer than the liberation of the democratic citizen.

I love that drag is political. For me, one of the reasons I started doing drag was reading about how in the past, drag performers were able to organize the queer community and move us forward.

I went to Catholic schools my entire life and never had anything close to a cis heterosexual sexual education let alone a queer one. Everything I learned was trial and error or the Internet or ‘Talk Sex with Sue Johanson.’

I think that when you’re queer, you grow up with these kinds of men who might have made you feel small because of who you are. They could be part of your family, or somebody on the street, or a teacher.

I always assumed that my otherness was a curse – that I would be held back by my Asian and queer identities.

Growing up as a queer child in Mississippi, I got my Nintendo in 1985, and I’ve been lost in this world ever since. When I was scared because my church said people like me were going to burn in hell, ‘Final Fantasy,’ ‘Dragon Warrior’ and ‘Super Mario’ offered a lifeboat.

The snappy way I would sum it up is not everyone is queer, but everyone has felt different. And I think that is something that people can really relate to in our music.

I take the time to show up for people in my field who are often not seen and heard in the same capacity as I am. Applauding other women and queer writers of color enables me to recognize and showcase the abundance of talent and work being created.

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.

I’m touching people, helping people, and I’m making music I love. I like to think a lot of other black queer artists feel that way too.

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

A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don’t know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists.

When I was working at Trio, I was pitched ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ and I knew, whoever gets this, this is a game changer. When I started at Bravo in 2005, it was a hit, and Season 1 of ‘Project Runway’ was in postproduction.

I hope that I do make music that can speak to anyone. I don’t just want to play for a queer crowd.

I think that’s the place ideally we’d like to get to as well, as queer people, where you can just judge the music for what it is and not just because it’s gay. I think it’s important that until we get to that place, statements have to be made, and we have to be loud and outward, so that’s where I’m coming from.

I have a direct hand in the queer zeitgeist, and what I’m putting out there has to be something I’m proud of.

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

I think there’s a large worry in queer communities about imitating straight people, when queerness has its own identity and maybe can be a radical force that should be dismantling stuff that locks people into structures.

It is a queer thing, but imaginary troubles are harder to bear than actual ones.

We need folks who are queer or trans, to have an opportunity to tell their story.

I actually don’t label myself, but… Some people call me queer; some people call me bisexual, whatever it is now. I’m happy with all of it ’cause it all sort of represents me, in a way. I spent a majority of my life in the closet.

I care more about a 15-year-old queer kid in Iowa who wants to know that there’s anything out there that resembles their experience and life than the hip queer person in Brooklyn.

Both ‘The Wire’ and ‘Queer as Folk’ had a big scope. They were panoramas, telling ambitious stories about two cities, Baltimore and Manchester, for the first time.

‘Drag Race’ is so unique in how much progress it has made in how people think of people in LGBTQIA-plus community and has helped make big strides in the way queer art is perceived.

I think that because I struggled and did get very bullied, that definitely made me learn how to be funny and let things roll off and be able to laugh, and I think that has definitely helped me when it comes to being in the public eye with ‘Gay of Thrones’ and ‘Queer Eye.’

In my dictionary, and everyone’s dictionary in the 1970s, the word ‘queer’ did mean strange and unusual. There was no slur to it.

The way I see queerness now is that, best case scenario, another queer person reflects it back at you. Worst case scenario, which is what happened to me, is having people say, Well, you like Michelle Branch, so you must be gay.’

The stories I grew up with, whether it came to queer representation or representation of anyone that was different, it was always a story of, like, very sad, usually ended up with somebody dying, and it made the idea of being queer or different really scary, actually.

Taking care of your mental health is important, and being able to model that for queer people who are out there every day dealing with their own struggles is very significant.

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Pittsburgh’s definitely the city where I learned how to be on a stage, hold a microphone, and interact with an audience. It’s where I got my chops as an entertainer and as a performer, so I’m grateful to the queer community there because they are active and vocal and they care about each other.

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.

I wonder if there’s space to queer the nomenclature in fitness. Maybe we call a goblet squat a Dannii Minogue instead? Just an idea.

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

Racism is a problem everywhere, especially in this country, but all over the world, and especially within queer space.

On ‘Queer Eye,’ I really get to see the way someone lives. They know the Fab Five are coming, but they don’t know when or how, so our producers make sure they don’t clean up so that we can experience exactly how they normally live.

Historically, our culture has not made room for the nuances of humanity. People have not been kept safe: women, people of colour, queer people, transgender people.

There are so many voices that tell people, especially queer people, that they don’t have importance and regality.

As a person who doesn’t identify as straight, any love song I write is contextualized by a queer identity.

I believe an authentic Judaism would legislate total equality for queer people.

Not only does the title ‘We’re Here’ highlight the fact that me, Shangela, and Eureka are here, but we as a queer community, we were already here. We were already existing in your space before these drag queens showed up with a big purse bus.

In high school, I came out to my friends as queer. My entire world opened up; this was a monumental step toward unveiling my truest self. I had my first girlfriend when I was sixteen years old.

I do my best to surround myself with queer people. I don’t go to straight bars and it’s quite frankly because I don’t feel comfortable there.

The successes of the LGBT civil rights movement and the more prominent role openly gay people are playing in the public eye has actually turned up the temperature in middle schools and high schools for queer kids.

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.

When I go to Fire Island, it’s always sort of the same thing. Everyone is coexisting, and isn’t that nice? But also, the risk of people co-opting what is a queer invention is okay, as long as it’s not for capital.

Learning that someone is gay, queer, trans, doesn’t tell you much by itself. They could be any kind of person aside from that particular slice of identity.

We understand that, in our communities, black trans folk, gender-nonconforming folk, black queer folk, black women, black disabled folk – we have been leading movements for a long time, but we have been erased from the official narrative.

When Queer Eye hit, the church told my mom they were praying for me. She said, God loves him too. And I support him 100 percent.

I was just a queer theater kid from New York City.

Especially when you’re queer and you’re a person of color, you’re so used to being the token on set. Inevitably you have to answer dumb questions from someone. You’re the ‘other.’

The inspiration of my drag is the history of drag, the long tradition of drag queens being at the forefront of queer activism. That informs my drag style, and in a sense, that is the direction we need to go in the future.

My favorite job, and definitely the one that means the most to me, is ‘Queer Eye.’

Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say No when they mean Yes, and drive a man out of his wits for the fun of it.

I feel like, almost overnight, and this is weird to say about myself, I’ve become a queer advocate without even meaning to.

No, Queer Eye has a book coming out before mine, in the Spring of 2004, in which each of us has a section and we do a brief overview of our subject area.

One of the things I’ve always loved about queer culture is the openness and passionate curiosity about love, desire and the myriad forms of affectionate ties.

I would like to encourage hip hop artists to invite those of us who are in the queer spaces in, so we can have those conversations. I love hip hop. If you bring me in the studio, I know how to act. And we can talk about what’s not cool because, clearly, there’s still homophobia that penetrates in all these areas.

People ask if I’m concerned about getting pigeonholed. No one asks, ‘Ellen, you’ve done seven straight roles in a row. Shouldn’t you shake it up, do something queer?’ There’s still that double standard.

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

What I loved about playing Ms. Albright in ‘Love, Simon’ is that, so often, when we speak of allies in the queer community, we don’t really get to see what it means be an active ally. I love that she can step into this world with these kids and be a truth teller.

In ‘Queer as Folk,’ we had three or four sex scenes in every episode, so I got used to doing that very early on. Those kinds of scenes can be challenging. They take a bit of time, and everyone’s a bit nervous.

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.

I know that it’s my queer perspective that’s helping people make songs that the world is listening to.

California is a queer place in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort.

I went to Vassar College for undergraduate and studied literature and queer theory, and all of the above. And then I took a Fulbright scholarship in Russia.

Sometimes you have to see the thing to know that it exists. Maybe there’s a queer person in a town, but they don’t feel comfortable or safe coming out, frankly, and the only representation they feel that they have or connection they have is on television or in a movie, and that’s really powerful.

Coming from a town of 30,000 people on the Mississippi River, having ‘Queer Eye’ in 2003 through 2007 when I was in high school was really important.

Each and every one of us has multiple identities, and this is a fact that should be celebrated. I for example, am a queer black woman who grew up poor in Los Angeles.

People in Scunthorpe don’t care what I say. And I’m not camp, either. I’m a geezer. I’m not a raving queer, I’ve got a bit of character. I just ignore people who shout at me in the street. I just stick my head in the air; I’m not interested.

By the time I finished ‘Poison,’ the New Queer Cinema was branded, and I was associated with this. In many ways, it formed me as a filmmaker, like as a feature filmmaker I never set out to be.

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

It’s nice to have a safe place to have a conversation going; whether it’s a friend or family member, you can use ‘Queer Eye’ as an entry point to have a conversation that’s meaningful.

The gay community has had a sometimes tumultuous relationship with non-queer people coming to their shows because it was tourism, like using the queer spaces as a form of comic relief or entertainment.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a form of service journalism. To be successful, I think it has to be a combination of a good story, it has to be funny, and it also needs to be packed with useful information.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

A lot of my queer development as a kid came from trawling the Internet.

Normally when you go to a queer space the people often look like you, they are the same age as you and so on, but at Mardi Gras and at queer events in general, everybody is different, everybody comes together. And that is what I love about Pride and Mardi Gras and those sort of events.

Off the top of my head, Alan Cumming was probably my biggest inspiration, as an actor and as a queer person.

As a young queer kid growing up, I explored my identity through the Chicago and Washington, D.C., club scene.

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.

You can celebrate pride, by lifting up what Black queer people have given us.

Because I didn’t have any queer, lesbian, female role models I hated my own femininity and had to look deep within myself to create an identity that worked for me. Pop culture just doesn’t hand us enough variety to choose from.

I’m queer – and queer, to me, is not being stuck in a binary and being kind of fluid.

I think as queer people, we were very used to accommodating.

Queer is about intense questioning that can’t be made nice and glossy.

Since his inauguration, Trump has signed numerous executive orders that negatively impact poor, black and brown, queer, Muslim, and other communities.

A lot of queer relationships on television and in films are met with extreme tragedy.

I really want to see normalization of queer sexuality – as well as the lack of sexuality.

I think, in general, straight actors should be able to play queer roles just as much as queer actors should be able to play straight roles. I think the reason why the debate is there is because we haven’t had enough queer actors being cast in anything. People are in need of that representation in general.

I have many queer friends who I consider to be heroes of mine, and they feel the same way toward me.

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.

My mother went through a phase in her life where she… stopped being queer for religious reasons. I remember, my mother rebuking her sexuality… Queerness was not okay. She basically just said it wasn’t okay for her… This is what, in my experience, religion can do to a queer person.

I hope we see more avenues for representation. More TV shows and films starring queer people, especially QPOC and nonbinary folks, more mainstream press coverage of our artwork and fashion, and more representation of our interests within politics.

Yes, it’s called ‘Queer Eye’ and there are five gay men on it, but we’re also tackling real issues. The conversations we have on our show would be just as valid if they swapped us out with straight guys. What we do is important, not just because we’re a niche gay show.

For myself, Queer Eye feeds more to my heart and my soul than as a platform for a career.

Please don’t compare the nature and authenticity of ‘Queer Eye’ to ‘The Bachelor.’

I think this is a trait that runs throughout the queer community, the obsession with the hyper-feminine female villains. And we see it in Disney movies and in movies like ‘Death Becomes Her,’ and in characters like Poison Ivy and Catwoman.

I think that I’m, like, an introverted extrovert. At the end of the day, when I get done doing hair at the salon or shooting a day of ‘Queer Eye’ or whatever, I definitely want to come home and, like, order pasta and sit with my cat or just one person or no people.

My brownness is something that I can’t hide. There are some straight-acting or straight-passing queer people out there, but I’m not one of them. This is something I would rather not have to hide.

Any child knows that history can only be a reduced representation of reality, but it must be a true one, not distorted by queer lenses.

We must do our part to make ourselves visible to the world. Let everyone see that being a queer parent of color is normal and happening right next door to them.

I’ve seen things change and people forget: the history of Berlin, the history of queer struggle, the history of AIDS, the history of New York changing from an artistic powerhouse to more of a financial one now.

Since we get so much love and support from the queer community around the world, we really wanted to connect with U.S. audiences too and put on amazing shows wherever we can!

A boy’s appetite grows very fast, and in a few moments the queer, empty feeling had become hunger, and the hunger grew bigger and bigger, until soon he was as ravenous as a bear.

That’s what I wanted ‘Pirate Jenny’ to be: a queer, revolutionary fairy tale for the people that I love.

Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

I would say that I’m a feminist theorist before I’m a queer theorist or a gay and lesbian theorist.

Honestly, drag queens are embedded within every part of queer culture.

Someday, maybe we’ll recognize that queer is actually the norm, and the notion of static sexual identities will be seen as austere and reductive.

I grew up in a town of 30,000 people, and ‘Queer Eye’ was a beacon of light.

I prefer men who are queer. Not gay men, but queer men – guys with an open mind. Bisexual men, because they’re able to understand the different elements of the body without judging that I don’t conform to a certain ideal.

The fact that I’m able to portray these complex, fully realized, queer Asian characters? I never thought it would be in this position. You just never see those types of characters and that type of representation.

Being an Asian person on SNL,’ when people are like, ‘Why did it take so long?’ It’s sort of a question that doesn’t fully understand the idea that there is no developmental experiential process for a queer Asian person to get into comedy in a way that feels inevitable.

My whole life is queer.

It’s really great to see the queer landscape really change to include everybody and make the rest of the world understand that we’re not just one or two things. There’s so much about the queer community that needs to be represented.

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.’

Drag Race’ is giving visibility to our community. It’s on TV and you can see RuPaul, who is a black, queer, powerful figure who has run this empire for years, and I think that’s an amazing thing.