EJ Johnson Quotes

Nowadays, if somebody in America is feeling alone and wants to find a coming out story, they just search 'coming out,' and they'll find millions of first-person examples of people telling their story.

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

I realize it's a cliche, almost, that coming out of the closet is a very healthy and empowering thing to do, but for me, it really has been a truly wonderful thing.

When people ask me for advice about when to come out, it's really about, before you do that, building a circle of support that can strengthen you through that experience. For me, it was my friends. There were people on 'My So-Called Life' that really helped guide me.

If coming out to someone makes them love you less, just know that I love you.

As many of you know, my story begins where most people's in the LGBT+ community begins... with fear. I knew I was different from my peers, my friends, and those around me when I started to discover who I was and who I identified as from a young age.

I came out because I fell in love. It wasn't a terrible, horrible, damn thing. I was in love with somebody, and I wanted to scream it from the rooftops.

The process of coming out is normally very disappointing. It's not that people react badly to it - they really don't care.

The fact that, for so many generations, ordinary, everyday Americans came out of the closet and told their family and friends about who they are has laid the foundation for public sentiment to change. They got comfortable in their own skins to be able to share themselves with family and friends. This is where social change took place.

I watched pretty much every coming out video on YouTube that has ever been posted; I watched it in between 14 and a half and 15. Those coming out videos, and those people on YouTube, those brave, brave, brave people on YouTube, without them, I don't know where I'd be.

I watched a million coming-out videos, and that was kind of how I accepted it myself.

I learned that coming out was crucial to self-esteem.

It's an experience I'd like to add to the chorus, that these blue-collar, macho men, like my older brother, had the capacity to say: 'I don't care, I love you anyway.' There are young kids thinking: 'I'll never come out because it's too hard in our communities.' But I'm saying maybe your story can be similar to mine.

I think that anybody coming out and saying, 'This is who I am, and let me show it to you...' is good for the world.

If I was ashamed of who I am, I would be in the closet.

All I can really say is to encourage anybody who's in the closet to come out, and congratulate anyone who has.

I think the reason why people loved 'Jem' in the '80s was because it kind of gave them this story of a place to fit in. It's about finding your place.

A bunch of my fans have come up to me and said, 'Because of you, and because you came out, I have finally begun to accept myself.' That is infinitely incredible for me. I didn't expect to get to the point where I would own up to it within myself.

The amount of people that have said, 'You've inspired me to be confident. I've come out to my friends because of you,' that reduces me to tears every time, because I'm just, like, little old me from Hull has had an implication on somebody's life. That's massive to me. Massive.

I came out at a very early age. I sat my mom down at my 12th birthday party and told her in front of my friends. She said, 'Baby, mama already knows, and I'm going to love you regardless.' Once I got my mom's support, there was nothing else I needed.

The curious thing is that I embraced homosexuality with as much joy and delight as I've embraced everything else in my life.

I want to be affirmatively proud of what I have made my way through. And to do that, in the same way I had to tell my father and my family and my friends that I was gay, I need to not hide this anymore.

I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can't change it and I like it.

You just need to be accepted for who you are and be proud of who you are and that is what I'm trying to do.

I wouldn't want them to feel lonely or outcast ever in any way. And no matter where they were in the world, I'd want them to always feel incredibly confident about who they were and proud.