Roxane Gay Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of the freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence.

Roxane Gay
We don't all have to believe in the same feminism. Feminism can be pluralistic so long as we respect the different feminisms we carry with us, so long as we give enough of a damn to try to minimize the fractures among us. Feminism will better succeed with collective effort, but feminist success can also rise out of personal conduct.

Roxane Gay
The more successful I get, the more I am reminded that in the minds of a great many people I will never be anything more than my body. No matter what I accomplish, I will be fat, first and foremost.

Roxane Gay
So many of us are reaching out, hoping someone out there will grab our hands and remind us we are not as alone as we fear.

Roxane Gay
I was called a feminist, and what I heard was, 'You are an angry, sex-hating, man-hating victim lady person.' This caricature is how feminists have been warped by the people who fear feminism most, the same people who have the most to lose when feminism succeeds.

Roxane Gay
We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we'll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, This is my truth, and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist.

Roxane Gay
If people cannot be flawed in fiction there's no place left for us to be human.

Roxane Gay
Don't flirt, have sex, or engage in emotional affairs with your friends' significant others. This shouldn't need to be said, but it needs to be said. That significant other is an asshole, and you don't want to be involved with an asshole who's used goods. If you want to be with an asshole, get a fresh asshole of your very own. They are abundant.

Roxane Gay
I believe feminism is grounded in supporting the choices of women even if we wouldn't make certain choices for ourselves.

Roxane Gay
When feminism falls short of our expectations, we decide the problem is with feminism rather than with the flawed people who act in the name of the movement.

Roxane Gay
When you look past the image, a celebrity is merely a person you know nothing about.

Roxane Gay
Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses — pretty but designed to slow women down.

Roxane Gay
I am human. I am messy. I'm not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I'm right. I am just trying - trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.

Roxane Gay
In truth, feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed.

Roxane Gay
I approach most things in life with a dangerous level of confidence to balance my generally low self-esteem.

Roxane Gay
I believe women not just in the United States but throughout the world deserve equality and freedom but know I am in no position to tell women of other cultures what that equality and freedom should look like.

Roxane Gay
The past is always with you. Some people want to be protected from this truth.

Roxane Gay
When you can't find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example.

Roxane Gay
To have privilege in one or more areas does not mean you are wholly privileged. Surrendering to the acceptance of privilege is difficult, but it is really all that is expected. What I remind myself, regularly, is this: the acknowledgment of my privilege is not a denial of the ways I have been and am marginalized, the ways I have suffered.

Roxane Gay
That the question of likability even exists in literary conversations is odd. It implies that we are engaging in a courtship. When characters are unlikable, they don't meet our mutable, varying standards. Certainly we can find kinship in fiction, but literary merit shouldn't be dictated by whether we want to be friends or lovers with those about whom we read.

Roxane Gay
The notion that I should be fine with the status quo even if I am not wholly affected by the status quo is repulsive.

Roxane Gay
Some women being empowered does not prove the patriarchy is dead. It proves that some of us are lucky.

Roxane Gay
Feminism's failings do not mean we should eschew feminism entirely. People do terrible things all the time, but we don't regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things. We should disavow the failures of feminism without disavowing its many successes and how far we have come.

Roxane Gay
You don't necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don't have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about.

Roxane Gay