A Quote by Andrew Solomon

I had always wanted to have children, so it caused me a lot of grief when I was younger, and I had supposed that gay people could not be parents. — © Andrew Solomon
I had always wanted to have children, so it caused me a lot of grief when I was younger, and I had supposed that gay people could not be parents.
I had to face the fact that I had been using my gay friends as props. They were always supposed to be funny and entertain me and praise me and listen to my problems, and their life was supposed to be a secret that no one wanted to hear about. I wanted them to stay in the “half closet.
My father tried to get me to be around gay people a lot when I was young. He owned a gay bookstore and it had a lot of gay literature and art books and he wanted me to be taken care of by the young gays and lesbians who worked for him.
I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.
When I was younger, the people making the sacrifice were my parents. It's not a cheap sport. Luckily, I had parents who made a lot of life sacrifices so I could continue in gymnastics.
I guess it's because I do have a younger audience that, you know, parents worry about the role model thing. But when I was younger, I looked up to people, but I never wanted to be them. I always had my own identity. I'm an entertainer when I'm on stage, and they need to explain that to their kids. That's not my job to do that.
Although my parents both liked her, they just didn't approve of a same-sex relationship. Nowadays, people say that you must let children be what they are, but when I was growing up, the parents defined the child - and my parents had a definite vision of how they wanted me to be.
My parents never pressured me to skate. They always said I could quit if I wanted to. They only expected me to skate when they had already paid for the expensive lessons. But, otherwise they said I could do what I wanted to do.
I've always had tremendous support from my parents. I think there's a myth that gay people have lousy relationships with their parents.
I always wanted to have children - if it had been up to me, I would have had eleven. It was my husband who wanted only two.
It's a fine line of doing what's good for your life and what your parents want you to do, but also following your dreams. With my parents, when I was younger, I always had to do two things. If I was acting, I always had to do a sport or something on the arts side of things, along with that. That way, if one fell apart, I always had something else to fall back on.
As a kid, I was always sick. I had pneumonia, I had really severe allergies. And it wasn't until I got older, that I realized some of that was caused by toxins in things like detergent. That made me crazy, because it's supposed to help get things clean!
I had to try to understand how much of a taboo it was. My mum worked in ballet and theatre when she was younger, and I had been brought up around lots of gay people, so I had never had any issue and couldn't imagine how hard it was to be out.
People have always said, are you gay? I've had a lot of that. But it's just not in me. I really like women a lot; I'm repulsed by men sexually.
With my parents, when I was younger, I always had to do two things. If I was acting, I always had to do a sport or something on the arts side of things along with that. That way, if one fell apart, I always had something else to fall back on.
I had convinced my father to let me pursue this career, and I passionately wanted it. And here was this conflict in me, and I hadn't shared it with my father. And it was excruciating to always have your guard up. Particularly because, being an actor, you're public and visible. I could be seen coming out of a gay bar. Who could have seen me?
I have two children myself. I always laugh; they have you playing mothers pretty early, us women. You look at the television, the mothers get younger and younger, and the children get older and older, and you start to wonder when these people had these children. Were they breeding when they were 12?
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