Top 55 Roxane Gay Quotes

I have never dreamed of being a princess. I have not longed for Prince Charming. I have and do long for something resembling a happily ever after. I am supposed to be above such flights of fantasy, but I am not. I am enamored of fairy tales.

I have known beaches, but I have no particular fondness for them. I don’t like sand in my crevices. I don’t like sand at all. I don’t enjoy all that sunshine and heat without the benefit of climate control.

Something outrageous, in the truest sense of the word, is always happening. On social networks, we’re always voicing our reactions to these outrageous events. We read essays and ‘think pieces’ about these outrageous events. We comment on the commentary. We do this because we can.

Want nothing but the best for your friends because when your friends are happy and successful, it’s probably going to be easier for you to be happy.

I keep trying to imagine a universe in which too many public figures declaring themselves feminists would be a bad thing.

I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.

I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel. I don’t want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption.

In Hollywood, a normal-size body is unruly.

A lot of ink is given over to mythologizing female friendships as curious, fragile relationships that are always intensely fraught. Stop reading writing that encourages this mythology.

I think there are a lot of rules for women. We have a lot of expectations and a lot of rules for women. So we’re expected to march in a straight line, and when we don’t, all hell breaks loose.

Placing Margaret Sanger on the $20 bill will remind us of what she has done for women and our reproductive health and how the fight for reproductive freedom is an ongoing one.

Florida is a strange place: hot, beautiful, ugly. I love it here, and how nothing makes sense but still, somehow, there is a rhythm.

After the Boston Marathon bombings, people shared grief and outrage on social media.

Most of the serious disagreement I get comes through email or social media, where people are more comfortable.

That’s what is always fascinating about racism – how it is allowed, if not encouraged, to flourish freely in public spaces, the way racism and bigotry are so often unquestioned.

You cannot reason with people who don’t recognize the humanity in all of us.

I have a job I’m pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive.

I cut an imposing figure. I am large, and I’m tall, and I have tattoos. I am actually really quiet and shy, but maybe people see me, and they don’t want to step out of line, or equate disagreement with stepping out of line with a writer they like.

When I was a child, my parents took my brothers and me to Port-au-Prince during the summer so we could get to know the country of our ancestors. Because Haiti is an island, the beach is everywhere. Haitians are particular, even snobby, about beaches.

I live in Indiana and teach at Purdue University, a wonderful school with some of the brightest students I have ever had the privilege of working with. My colleagues are powerful and intelligent and kind. The cost of living is low, the prairie is wide, and on clear nights, I can see all the stars in the sky above.

I think one of the most important things we can do as feminists is acknowledge that, even though we have womanhood in common, we have to start to think about the ways in which we’re different, how those differences affect us, and what kinds of needs we have based on our differences.

This is the real problem feminism faces. Too many people are willfully ignorant about what the word means and what the movement aims to achieve.

As I started to think about how I can claim feminism while also acknowledging my humanity and my imperfections, ‘bad feminism’ simply seemed like the best answer.

It’s an amusing idea to some, this feminism thing – this audacious notion that women should be able to move through the world as freely, and enjoy the same inalienable rights and bodily autonomy, as men. At least, that’s the impression given when feminism and feminists are all too often the targets of lazy humor.

I read too many romance novels during my formative years. I have a penchant for romantic comedies. I understand why ‘Romeo and Juliet’ came to such a pass.

If you feel like it’s hard to be friends with women, consider that maybe women aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s just you.

If a woman wants to take her husband’s name, that’s her choice, and I still think she can be feminist while doing that.

I would love for everyone to be a feminist, but I have to respect people’s choices. If you don’t want to be a feminist and don’t want to claim feminism, that’s entirely your right.

In truth, I don’t care about making feminism more accessible to anyone.

We all have our vanities. The retouching magazines like ‘Vogue’ do is the professional version of the retouching we do when we, for example, apply Instagram filters to the pictures we take and share on our social networks.

The open letter has always been an interesting rhetorical strategy – a way of delivering a pointed message to a specific individual or group while also reaching a wide audience.

Feminism is just an idea. It’s a philosophy. It’s about the equality of women in all realms. It’s not about man-hating. It’s not about being humorless. We have to let go of these misconceptions that have plagued feminism for 40, 50 years.

I think the world is ambivalent about feminism. So I can’t blame college students. I think they’re reflecting the greater culture’s attitude toward feminism. So what I can do is, in ways that are appropriate, advocate for feminism and help the students learn what feminism is about.

We bear witness to the worst of human brutality, retweet what we have witnessed, and then we move on to the next atrocity. There is always more atrocity.

2014 was a year of intense social upheaval. In truth, the same could be said for most every year. There is no standstill in a world filled with so many people, scrambling for so much.

I am totally down with disagreement. I don’t like Haterade, but disagreement is wonderful. When someone disagrees, we try to reach common ground. That’s good.

Margaret Sanger didn’t just introduce the idea of birth control into our culture at large, she freed women from indenture to their bodies.

There is an odd assumption that compassion and care are finite or that critics can be everything to everyone – commenting on everything simply because they can. That’s not what cultural criticism is.

Long walks on the beach are the supposed holy grail of a romantic evening. The beach becomes a kind of utopia – the place where all our dreams come true.

If I am ever in the spotlight, I want to look good.

I recognize that I’m human, and the older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am, how fallible we all are.

It’s so hard to write about countries like Haiti because there’s truths behind the misperceptions people have. But there’s so much more. There are multiple truths.

Day after day with them, I see more and more of my parents in me. I see where all my quirks come from. I see my future.

It would be easy to assume that the open letter is a symptom of the Internet age. Such is not the case. In 1774, Benjamin Franklin wrote an open letter to the prime minister of Great Britain, Lord North – a satirical call for the imposition of martial law in the colonies.

I think that everyone in one way or another has some sort of body issue. There’s something about themselves physically that they’re not happy with, that they’re ashamed of, that they keep constantly trying to change.

I can consider not only great art, but the context in which that art has been created. I can consider the people who paid a price for that art to be created and whether or not I want to appreciate that art on their backs.

Throughout any given season of ‘The Bachelor,’ the women exclaim that the experience is like a fairy tale. They suffer the machinations of reality television, pursuing – along with several other women, often inebriated – the promise of happily ever after.

I love, but I am not entirely sure how to be loved: how to be seen and known for the utterly flawed woman I am. It demands surrender. It demands acknowledging that I am not perfect, but perhaps I deserve affection anyway.

You can’t control the fact that you are born a white man or born into wealth. When people say, ‘Check your privilege,’ they’re saying, ‘Acknowledge how these factors helped you move through life.’ They’re not saying apologize for it.

I don’t want the whole of my writing or my intellectual energy given over to race because I have diverse interests.

I reject the idea that when young women make choices with which we disagree, they are acting without autonomy.

No one is helped when cultural critics use their voices irresponsibly.

I support anything that broadens the message of gender equality and tempers the stigma of the feminist label. We run into trouble, though, when we celebrate celebrity feminism while avoiding the actual work of feminism.