Roxane Quotes & Sayings

With my writing, I generally just pretend that no one's reading it. I allow myself that delusion so that I can write the things that I write. — Roxane Gay

I've always wanted to be a writer. I've been writing since I was probably four years old - it was nonsense, but it was still my little attempts at being a storyteller. — Roxane Gay

ROXANE. One hundred men against one: you! - So, good bye! - We are the best of friends, are we not? CYRANO. Assuredly, we are! — Edmond Rostand

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. — Roxane Gay

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

Violence is not the answer but neither is peace. — Roxane Gay

What goes unsaid is that women might be more ambitious and focused because we've never had a choice. We've had to fight to vote, to work outside the home, to work in environments free of sexual harassment, to attend the universities of our choice, and we've also had to prove ourselves over and over to receive any modicum of consideration. — 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

The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

When women respond negatively to misogynistic or rape humor, they are "sensitive" and branded as "feminist," a word that has, as of late, become a catchall term for "woman who does not tolerate bullshit. — Roxane Gay

When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume, even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. I am mortified by my music choices. — Roxane Gay

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

My tweeting is cool and calm unless I am riled up about something and then I just surrender to the fury of my fingers. — Roxane Gay

Feminism has neglected the needs of woman of color and people of color in general. But I don't think it means that we should overlook feminism as having nothing valuable to contribute. — 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

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

I'm sick of hearing, thinking and talking about Woody Allen. Nonetheless, the allegations against him continue to capture our national attention because so much of the story is strange and sordid. — Roxane Gay

Maybe I'm a bad feminist, but I am deeply committed to the issues important to the feminist movement. I have strong opinions about misogyny, institutional sexism that consistently places women at a disadvantage, the inequity in pay, the cult of beauty and thinness, the repeated attacks on reproductive freedom, violence against women, and on and on. I am as committed to fighting fiercely for equality as I am committed to disrupting the notion that there is an essential feminism. — Roxane Gay

Just write and love what you're writing. And if you're not loving what you're writing, take a look at why and fix that. — Roxane Gay

If we look too closely at many historical figures, we won't like what we see. — Roxane Gay

My parents have been married for 42 years. Their marriage has been - from what I can see - a happy one. — Roxane Gay

If I were ever to grace the pages of 'Vogue,' I would want my image retouched because the audience is so vast. There is great vulnerability in being exposed to that many judging eyes. I feel no small amount of guilt over this willingness to surrender my ideals. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

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

We have cellphones and smartphones and iDevices and laptops and the ability to be perpetually connected. We never have to miss anything, significant or insignificant. — Roxane Gay

Twitter has allowed the conversation to broaden and become more inclusive. At times, the conversation is really tense but that's because we're talking about really important issues. It's not going to be easy but at least the conversations are happening. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

I wrote myself back together. I wrote myself toward a stronger version of myself ... Through writing and feminism, I also found that if I was a little bit brave, another woman might hear me and see me and recognize that none of us are the nothing the world tries to tell us we are. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

In Hollywood, a normal-size body is unruly. — 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

I am 39. I am single. I am a black woman. I have too many advanced degrees. Many a news story tells me finding true love is likely a hopeless proposition. Now is the time when I need to believe in fairy tales. — Roxane Gay

I love Twitter. It doesn't keep me from writing and I think it's a really convenient scapegoat when the truth is that the real issue is self-control. I am totally fine admitting i have none. I'm not going to blame Twitter for affecting my writing. And also, Twitter doesn't affect my writing. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

I tend to write three to four hours a day, depending - oftentimes very late at night. When I write on Twitter, I do other things: I'm working, grading, or reading, and I'm procrastinating, and I'll pop on Twitter and be like, 'Hey, what's up? Yogurt's delicious.' — Roxane Gay

Most of my favorite tweets go completely ignored but most of my favorite tweets are probably really lame or inside jokes between me and my [redacted]. See what I did there? — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

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. — 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

I have never been married. I don't know if I will ever marry, though I hope to. When I am asked why I have not married, I explain that my parents have been happily married for 42 years. The bar feels so very high for that kind of commitment. — Roxane Gay

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. — 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

There's certainly a portion of my brain that is always tuned to making wry observations about the world, but that portion of my brain was alive and well before Twitter. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

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

Social media is something of a double-edged sword. At its best, social media offers unprecedented opportunities for marginalized people to speak and bring much needed attention to the issues they face. At its worst, social media also offers 'everyone' an unprecedented opportunity to share in collective outrage without reflection. — Roxane Gay

Maybe true love isn't out there for me, but I can sublimate my loneliness with the notion that true love is out there for someone. — Roxane Gay

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

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. — Roxane Gay

I am mortified by my music choices. — Roxane Gay

I believe in the freedom of expression, unequivocally - though, as I have written before, I wish more people would understand that freedom of expression is not freedom from consequence. — Roxane Gay

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

Most open letters undoubtedly come from a good place, rising out of genuine outrage or concern or care. There is, admittedly, also a smugness to most open letters: a sense that we, as the writers of such letters, know better than those to whom the letters are addressed. We will impart our opinions to you, with or without your consent. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

Internet outrage can seem mindless, but it rarely is. To make that assumption is dismissive. There's something beneath the outrage - an unwillingness to be silent in the face of ignorance, hatred or injustice. Outrage may not always be productive, but it is far better than silence. — Roxane Gay

No matter what issues I have with feminism, I am a feminist. I cannot and will not deny the importance and absolute necessity of feminism. Like most people, I'm full of contradictions, but I also don't want to be treated like shit for being a woman. — Roxane Gay

People don't want to think ... I mean, they don't! They just want to say, 'Oh, okay, feminists are humorless man-haters,' and that's simply not the case. There are radical people and radical ideas in absolutely every movement, but that doesn't mean they define the ideals. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

We cannot sway extremists with rational thought or with our ideas of right and wrong. — Roxane Gay

So often feminism is built up as this thing where you have to be perfect. You have to be consistent and you can't ever deviate. That's just not realistic. — Roxane Gay

It's disheartening that people think that Donald Sterling is the outlier and that he's the exception and not the rule. — 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

Feminism is, I hope, a way to a better future for everyone who inhabits this world. Feminism should not be something that needs a seductive marketing campaign. The idea of women moving through the world as freely as men should sell itself. — Roxane Gay

In truth, I don't care about making feminism more accessible to anyone. — Roxane Gay

Praise Roxane Gay for her big-hearted self-examining intelligence, for her inclusive and forgiving stance, for her courage and determination ... for saying out loud the things we were thinking, for guiding us back to ourselves and returning to us what was ours all along. — Pam Houston

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

You cannot reason with people who don't recognize the humanity in all of us. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

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. — 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

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

People do terrible things all the time, but we don't regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

Public intellectuals are often put in the position of having their words, no matter how off-the-cuff, treated as doctrine. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

I recognize that I'm human, and the older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am, how fallible we all are. — Roxane Gay

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

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. — Roxane Gay

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

ROXANE:
Live, for I love you!
CYRANO:
No, In fairy tales
When to the ill-starred Prince the lady says 'I love you!' all his ugliness fades fast
But I remain the same, up to the last!
ROXANE:
I have marred your life
I, I!
CYRANO:
You blessed my life!
Never on me had rested woman's love.
My mother even could not find me fair:
I had no sister; and, when grown a man,
I feared the mistress who would mock at me.
But I have had your friendship
grace to you
A woman's charm has passed across my path.
— Edmond Rostand

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. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

It sometimes feels like the workplace is immune from social upheaval. We go to work and do the best we can, and at the end of the day, we return to our lives. We don't abandon who we are, however, when we begin and end our workday. Who we are shapes how we are perceived in the workplace and, in turn, how we perform in the workplace. — Roxane Gay

Demands for solidarity can quickly turn into demands for groupthink, making it difficult to express nuance. — 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

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. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

I am not easy to love but I am well loved. I try to love well in return. — Roxane Gay

I was in love with the idea of love, so I created elaborate fictions for my relationships - fictions that allowed me to believe that what any given paramour and I shared looked a lot like love. — Roxane Gay

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. — Roxane Gay

It's hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you're going to float the fuck away. — Roxane Gay

I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all. — 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

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. — Roxane Gay

For celebrities, privacy is utterly nonexistent. You are asked intrusive questions about your personal life. You can be photographed at any moment. — Roxane Gay

Roxane: His face is like yours, burning with spirit and imagination. He is proud and noble and young and fearless and beautiful-
Cyrano:(losing all his colour.) Beautiful!
Roxane: Yes. What's wrong?
Cyrano: With me? Nothing. It's only ... only ... (Displaying his bandaged hand, with a little smile.) This fatal wound. — Edmond Rostand

Love your friends' kids, even if you don't want or like children. Just do it. — Roxane Gay

Writing, at its best and truest, can offer solace and salvation for both readers and writers. — Roxane Gay