Coming Out To Family Quotes & Sayings

You see the grandmother down there with her son and grandson? They've probably been coming here for years together. Or maybe it's their first trip. Either way, it's three generations sitting down together, laying aside their differences for one night to be a family. This is humanity, Steele. This is what we're fighting for. Family. People. Pride. It's our differences that make up our strength. BAD isn't about patriotism. It's about saving individuals. Not just those in America, but all the ones who are out there going about their lives with little to no care about politics. Men, women, and children who only want to live peacefully while others are looking for ways to use them as pawns in a deadly game they don't even want to play. (Joe) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The place of horror turns out to be no more than a green scoop, sometimes shadowed, sometimes shining with the bilberries and grass within it, as if a mouth had opened from which streamed a beam of light. So my uncle Robert's death, which had looked from a distance to be an all-consuming tragedy was, close-up, the story of a man finding release from his pain and how his brother had showed such defiant love. The past was a grave, a trap - and yet, also neither of these. Just light, coming and going.
At the wolf pit you imagine you will stare into a hole littered with bones, but what draws you to that place is not what you take from it. The wolf pit seems a delicate illusion. You walk towards it; there is nothing, just a curve of the moor; then it is a soft green light, and then it is nothing again. — Will Cohu

A woman's life may die away in the fore of self-hatred for complexes can bite hard and, at least for a time, successfully frighten her away from coming too near the work or life that matters to her ... Many years are spent not going, not moving, not learning, not finding out, not obtaining, not taking on, not becoming. The vision a woman has for her own life can also be decimated at someone else's jealousy or someone's plain out destructiveness towards her family, mentors, teachers, and friends are not supposed to be destructive if and when they feel envy, but some decidedly are, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. No woman can afford to let her creative life hang by a thread while she serves an antagonistic love relationship , parent, teacher or friend. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

There are truckloads of broccoli at this very minute descending on Washington. My family is divided. For the broccoli vote out there: Barbara loves broccoli. She has tried to make me eat it. She eats it all the time herself. So she can go out and meet the caravan of broccoli that's coming in. — George H. W. Bush

Not a day goes by that I don't still need to remind myself that my life is not just what's handed to me, nor is it my list of obligations, my accomplishments or failures, or what my family is up to, but rather it is what I choose, day in and day out, to make of it all. When I am able simply to be with things as they are, able to accept the day's challenges without judging, reaching, or wishing for something else, I feel as if I am receiving the privilege, coming a step closer to being myself. It's when I get lost in the day's details, or so caught up in worries about what might be, that I miss the beauty of what is. — Katrina Kenison

We actually have some gay people that work with us, and we have a lot of friends that are gay, too, and I know that this song has inspired them ... I know that coming out was tough on their parents and on them and the whole entire family. For a long time, some of them didn't get to hear 'I love you' from their dads or be accepted in that way ... It's helped a lot of our friends ... We don't judge anybody's lives. — Martha Stewart

The counselor says that we are "at the beginning of a long, uphill journey." She says, "Relapse is a part of recovery."

I think, You have got to be fucking kidding me.

I say, "Do I look like someone who's ready for a long, uphill journey?" Lucy snickers for a second, and I love her. I lover her much more than I want to.

But I am worn down and out. The thought of another trip crushes me. I tell Lucy, You are my family. But I'm not coming with you. — Ariel Levy

But playing your music as loud as you want and coming home drunk aren't real life. Real life, it turns out, is diapers and lawnmowers, decks that need painting, a wife that needs to be listened to, kids that need to be taught right from wrong, a checkbook, an oil change, a sunset behind a mountain, laughter at a kitchen table, too much wine, a chipped tooth, and a screaming child. — Donald Miller

I know I can't tell you what it's like to be gay. But I can tell you what it's not. It's not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity. — Armistead Maupin

There's always an excitement around the Strip whenever something new being built. It was always the biggest and the best hotel or, you know, over-the-top things. And so, family would be coming in from out of town, and it was such a thrill to be showing them this, you know, erupting new volcano or whatever it was. — Brandon Flowers

I'm a blowfish. I'm not a shark, I'm a blowfish. So that perfect example about me hitting my head [he walked into a street sign and it was caught by paparazzi], it's like a blowfish. I wasn't coming out of my house going to a paparazzi's house to attack them. I'm defending my family in front of my own house. I'm defending my name as someone's screaming something negative at me. That's a blowfish. People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn't want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people. — Kanye West

Our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you've ever been there, you know the signs don't tell you the exit you're coming up to, they only point out the exits you've just missed.
It puts parents in very foul moods
and since you're probably there to visit relatives, their mood was pretty touch and go to begin with. — Neal Shusterman

In 1974 I was trying to get my first little band together. That year marked kind of a traumatic point in my life, but I had a lot of support from friends and family and a lot of good things ended up coming out of it. — Emmylou Harris

It's sad really, trying to appreciate all of the great events in our lives and all the amazingly good days. Sometimes it seems like we take them for granted, until something bad comes along to put us back into perspective. Are these bad events catalysts for change, which bring out the resiliency and best in us? A cosmic wakeup call that reminds us to enjoy the good times, because they can be taken away so easily.
How messed up and ironic would that be?
Is it even possible for us to remember what goodness we're truly capable of on a daily basis, not just when things cause us to react out of necessity. A base line of beautiful acts and thoughts that are not brought out only by holiday music or someone else's misfortune, but remain at the surface of who we really are. Wouldn't that be amazing? Wouldn't that be something to strive for? — Matthew Alan

I've been able to help my family financially since making my first hit record. I bought my parents a house. My husband and I have a property in Portugal and one in Mumbles, Wales, and my family are always coming out to visit us. It has been fantastic to have such a successful career and to have been able to help everyone. — Bonnie Tyler

The only emotions coming from him were light, playful - maybe with a little resignation wrapped in there, but positive feelings flowed across out bond.
"You are amused," I said. "What was in the vial? What are you so suddenly amused?"
He tipped his head. "It's...freeing, this shift in perspective. It's all rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but you want this - for campus, your new home, to be happy and free. Easy enough to assist with, so here I am."
"I had to drag you here."
"It wouldn't be a game otherwise. You would have been far more skeptical had I come willingly. You'd never have brought it and I'd have been made to stand elsewhere, relegated to being good."
I looked at him, then slipped my hand around his arm and squeezed. "I'd buy it."
Bonds wrapped around me - family, fondness, and something slightly darker and more fatalistic. He squeezed my hand beneath his, then pulled away before I could identify the last feeling. — Anne Zoelle

As for free will, there is such a narrow crack of it for man to move in, crushed as he is from birth by environment, heredity, time and event and local convention. If I had been born of Italian parents in one of the caves in the hills I would be a prostitute at the age of 12 or so because I had to live (why?) and that was the only way open. If I was born into a wealthy New York family with pseudo-cultural leanings, I would have had my coming-out party along with the rest of them, and be equipped with fur coats, social contacts, and a blase pout. How do I know? I don't; I can only guess. I wouldn't be I. But I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of "I" that I can hardly bear to think of it. I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession. The pen scratches on the paper ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I. — Sylvia Plath

I was always interested in music, I felt it was time to do it, coming out of the punk scene [1979]. I thought it was ideal that anyone could just put together a group and make it work. Then, of course, it became a little more detailed after starting it and realizing that it was something serious, not just a one-off situation. I had to put a lot more into it. Also I did it to get a lot of things out of my system, things that had been put there while I was growing up in my family. A sort of exorcizing of demons. — Rozz Williams

The most you can do is stand up for what you believe in. I'm much happier since coming out to my friends and family. Being genuine and honest makes me happy. — Jason Collins

Well, The Year Is Finally Wrapped up, Looking Back, I Made Mistakes Along Just like The Next Man, As a Matter of Fact, I Have Wronged, Disappointed, Been Inpatient a Little Insecure, Been Out of Control and at Times Hard to Bare With.
My Prayer Dear Family and Friend is That You Forgive Me and Continue to Bare With Me as I Look Upon Myself and Work on Myself on The Next Coming Years, I Haven't Been The Best of Friends But Sure I Will As I Continue To Seek God's Enlightenment and Wisdom. I Love You All and Bless You In God's Name. — William Nsubuga

Coming out of the forest was much harder than coming in. Marian had always found coming out difficult- generally, she arrived at a graveyard unencumbered and left with pockets or satchels full of coin and jewels, which made concealment much more difficult. It was of course also tremendously easy to walk into a shop with the intent of stealing, but immensely more of a problem to come out of one with a loaf of bread tucked under her arm. Perhaps most difficult of all had been coming out to her family the day she told them she was their daughter and their sister, as opposed to the son and brother they had previously been lead to believe she was. That had been an odd sort of day. At the time, her — Dajo Jago

He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average British ghost. Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and he is happy. Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn the whole house upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting a bankruptcy, or hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terrible disaster, about which nobody in their senses would want to know sooner than they could possible help, and the prior knowledge of which can serve no useful purpose whatsoever, and he feels that he is combining duty with pleasure. He would never forgive himself if anybody in his family had a trouble and he had not been there for a couple of months beforehand, doing silly tricks on the lawn or balancing himself on somebody's bedrail.

("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER) — Jerome K. Jerome

I have always been a loner. Even as a child, when my family and friends were off attending parties I would be sequestered in my room, sketchpad in hand, stereo by my side, listening to seductive R&B. Solitude was something I took for granted. Coming from a large family I needed solitude in order to think straight and paint my way out of confusion. My parents were accepting of the fact that I kept to myself and they respected my decision even though it went against my Somali upbringing, a culture rooted in boisterousness and joie de vivre. — Diriye Osman

The village lay in the hollow, and climbed, with very prosaic houses, the other side. Village architecture does not flourish in Scotland. The blue slates and the grey stone are sworn foes to the picturesque; and though I do not, for my own part, dislike the interior of an old-fashioned pewed and galleried church, with its little family settlements on all sides, the square box outside, with its bit of a spire like a handle to lift it by, is not an improvement to the landscape. Still, a cluster of houses on differing elevations - with scraps of garden coming in between, a hedgerow with clothes laid out to dry, the opening of a street with its rural sociability, the women at their doors, the slow waggon lumbering along - gives a centre to the landscape. It was cheerful to look at, and convenient in a hundred ways. ("The Open Door") — Mrs. Oliphant

Coming out is something you never stop doing. You start by telling your friends and family. Then you tell new acquaintances or coworkers who invite you out for a drink. Even the telemarketers who call and ask if my wife is home. You don't have to tell everyone you meet, of course, but coming out is something that accompanies your entire life. — Jay Bell

Back in the day, coming out was something very personal. You began by acknowledging the truth, first to yourself, then to close family and friends. Those of us more in the public spotlight, though, also had to 'come out' to the press. — George Takei

So, like I said, these are a bunch of really sweet guys, but you wouldn't want to share a Galaxy with them, not if they're just gonna keep at it, not if they're not gonna learn to relax a little. I mean it's just gonna be continual nervous time, isn't it, right? Pow, pow, pow, when are they next coming at us? Peaceful coexistence is just right out, right? Get me some water somebody, thank you."

He sat back and sipped reflectively.

OK," he said, "hear me, hear me. It's, like, these guys, you know, are entitled to their own view of the Universe. And according to their view, which the Universe forced on them, right, they did right. Sounds crazy, but I think you'll agree. They believe in ..."

He consulted a piece of paper which he found in the back pocket of his Judicial jeans.

They believe in 'peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms'. — Douglas Adams

Now, now," my father said. "Let's just get the bags."
This was typical. My father, the lone male in our estrogen-heavy household, had always dealt with any kind of emotional situation or conflict by doing something concrete and specific. Discussion of cramps and heavy flow at the breakfast table? He was up and out the door to change oil on one of our cars. Coming home in tears for reasons you just didn't want to discuss? He'd go make you a grilled cheese, which he'd probably end up eating. Family crisis brewing in a public place? Bags. Get the bags. — Sarah Dessen

When we get to the point where a gay pro athlete is no longer forced to live in fear that he'll be shunned by teammates or outed by tabloids, when we get to the point where he plays while his significant other waits in the family room, when we get to the point where he's not compelled to hide his true self and is able to live an authentic life, then coming out won't be such a big deal. But we're not there yet, — Jason Collins

My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it's a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That's a big step. Maybe without me, there wouldn't be Adam Lambert. Without Bowie, there wouldn't be me. Without Quentin Crisp, there wouldn't have been Bowie. So everything is part of a big daisy chain. — Boy George

I graduated from the University of Oklahoma, and I got the opportunity to take some on-camera classes while I was in school and met a casting director who informed me quite a bit before my move out to L.A.; it made L.A. feel possible, coming from Oklahoma and not having a family that was in the industry. — Laura Spencer

Oh, dear God!" Janice bellowed and looked as though her neck was made of rubber as her head wobbled back and forth. Lou set the book back on the credenza as Janice stormed out. "Ashton, I'm sorry you had to witness that. As you well know, Mom has never been a pleasant woman. Since coming to live here, she's been a nightmare on two legs. I've had her head examined, and there's no tumor or disease to explain her behavior. The neurologist and our family doctor have simply diagnosed her as a chronic jackass. — Robin Alexander

The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine ... While the children are falling asleep and complaining about the noise you're making as you rummage through the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife might've thrown them out with last spring's cleaning.
It's snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza (unknown to you) is hopelessly missing. — Charles Simic

If you're just snoozing every day until the last possible moment you have to head off to work, show up for school, or take care of your family, and then coming home and zoning out in front of the television until you go to bed (this used to be my daily routine), I've got to ask you: When are you going to develop yourself into the person you need to be to create the levels of health, wealth, happiness, success, and freedom that you truly want and deserve? When are you going to actually live your life instead of numbly going through the motions looking for every possible distraction to escape reality? What if your reality - your life - could finally be something that you can't wait to be conscious for? — Hal Elrod

I always thought my family was so bizarre, so when people started coming up to me and saying, 'My family was exactly like yours,' I was completely knocked out. — Mary Karr

I write to get ideas out of my head — Bobbi Kay

She was coming over to my place and instead of us hanging with my knucklehead boys - me smoking, her bored out of her skull - we were seeing movies. Driving out to different places to eat. Even caught a play at the Crossroads and I took her picture with some bigwig black playwrights, pictures where she's smiling so much you'd think her wide-ass mouth was going to unhinge. We were a couple again. Visiting each other's family on the weekends. Eating breakfast at diners hours before anybody else was up, rummaging through the New Brunswick library together, the one Carnegie built with his guilt money. A nice rhythm we had going. — Junot Diaz

My mother hasn't asked the questions that a normal person would ask, and I'm grateful for it. It's like the world has become so crazy that it makes sense to her now.
I turn on the engine and drive us out. 'Thanks, Mom. For coming to rescue me.' My voice comes out reedy and a little wobbly. I clear my throat. 'Not every mom would do that in a world like this. — Susan Ee

I was born in the wrong body. I'm actually, spiritually, a wolf. It's called being otherkin. It's very important for me to be open about it - coming out transformed my life, and my family. Our dog used to be terrified of storms and postal workers, but I was able to communicate with her, and now she's much more secure and self-grounded. I think of communication as my calling." "Please — Eve Tushnet

We all have rosy memories of a simpler, happy time- a time of homemade apple pie and gingham curtains, a time when Mom understood everything and Dad could fix anything. "Let's get those traditional family values back!" we murmur to each other. Meanwhile, in a simultaneous universe, everyone I know, and every celebrity I don't know, is coming out of the closet to talk about how miserable they are because they grew up in dysfunctional families. — Cynthia Heimel

I'm right here," he said. "Dad's right here. I'm going nowhere. Just gonna wait until you're ready to come out into the world, and then your mom and I are going to take care of you. So you hang tight, we
clear? Do your thing, and we'll wait for however long it takes."
With his free hand, he took Layla's palm, and put it over his own.
"Your family is right here. Waiting for you ... and we love you."
It was totally stupid to talk to what was, no doubt, nothing but a bundle of cells. But he couldn't help
it. The words, the actions ... they were at once totally his, and yet coming from a place that was foreign to him.
Felt right, though.
Felt ... like what a father was supposed to do. — J.R. Ward

I turned and moved fast, focusing swiftly on a wave I had selected for no reason. There was whiteness and grenyess in it and a sort of blue and green. It was a line. It did not toss, nor did it stay still. It was all movement, all spillage, but it was pure containment as well, utterly focused just as I was watching it. It had an elemental hold; it was something coming towards us as though to save us but it did nothing instead, it withdrew in a shurgging irony, as if to suggest that this is what the world is, and our time in it, all lifted possibility, all complexity and rushing fervour, to end in nothing on a small strand, and go back out to rejoin the empty family from whom we had set out alone with such a burst of brave unknowing energy. — Colm Toibin