“It gets better. It seems hard, you know, I think being different is always gonna be a tough climb.”

Los Angeles can be a really sad city.

I’m trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader.

I was looking for something and I wasn’t sure what it was. [After experimenting with] certain funguses,

I breeze through Twitter – I look at the mentions, the pictures, the videos.

Fantasy is so much hotter than reality most of the time.

There’s always gonna be people that are scared of it. But at the end of the day you give those bullies, those people, that are so ignorant, if you give them the power to affect you, you’re letting them win.

When you dance and move around it creates a different reaction from the audience – they love it.

I want to upset people, I want to make people think, I want to keep people interested.

Conforming is not cool. Embracing who you are and what makes you different is actually what’s really cool.

I have crushes on women all the time.

I’ve sung other people’s music all my life.

The biggest risk I’ve ever taken is going on American Idol and trying to be myse

I am gay, and I’m very comfortable with it.

Carving out an identity for yourself is important so I’m trying to do that as well.

I wanted the focus to be on my ability as a singer and as an entertainer – not on my private life.

For me, one of the important things about keeping vocally healthy is warming up and making sure I’m aware where my voice is at, drinking lots of water and getting plenty of sleep, and just taking care of myself with exercise and eating healthy.

The flagrantly gay Quentin Crisp dealt with homophobic bullying by refusing to bow to its onslaught. His number listed in the phone directory, he responded to derogatory remarks accompanied with a stated intent to kill him by asking, “Would you like to make an appointment?”

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

This was in the ’70s and there was a lot of racism towards South Asians and there was a lot of hazing and bullying and racism that really probably shaped me in some way in terms of, like, wanting to get out of there.

No tolerance for bullying.

How easy it is to make fun of someone, how difficult to step into their shoes.

What people don’t realize is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you’re being bullied by millions of people constantly.

We the people will not be silenced, we the people will not be bullied, we the people will not surrender.