Roxane gay quotes

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.

I am trying to keep growing and improving as a writer.

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.

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

I write for myself, first and foremost and I also write for people, mostly women, who just want to be seen and heard and all too often aren't.

Feminism is a choice, and if a woman does not want to be a feminist, that is her right, but it is still my responsibility to fight for her rights. I believe feminism is grounded in supporting the choices of women even if we wouldn't make certain choices for ourselves. 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.

Writing has always allowed me to escape. I was a very lonely child. Because I was very socially awkward, I would always have trouble making friends. And so reading and writing allowed me to have friends and to have an active imaginary life that really sort of kept me sane.

Oftentimes, when a woman demands accountability, respect, or consideration, she is crazy or nagging or whatever.

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.

I am mortified by my music choices.

Feminism is definitely a part of everything I do.

Emotionally, my ambition is not yet sated. Emotionally, I still feel like a kid at the adult's table, yearning for recognition. I'm not sure where this all comes from but it is how I feel.

Diversity in literature is, in part, about representation - who is telling the stories and who stories are told about.

It's gut instinct that helps me determine how to write a story. I love the surreal because I am faced with the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. That challenge is thrilling.

Readers need to stop assuming characters are white if race isn't explicitly defined.

Violence is a common part of far too many women's lives.

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.

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

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.

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

I like what the internet offers: the ability to get people interested in your mind, and have a chance if you're not conventionally attractive.

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

Most of the time, writing is a lot of fun, and not a small amount of self-medication.

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?

I would like to believe that most people, regardless of gender, are good and kind. The good men in my stories are the rule. It's the bad men that are the exception and because I tend toward the dark in my fiction, you see more of the exception than the rule.

I love how I can see [on Twitter] some of the thoughts and ideas of my favorite cultural figures and still also chatter with my friends and family. It's a cocktail party with a fraction of the awkwardness of an actual cocktail party.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I am fine with my books being categorized as African-American literature but I hope they are also considered Haitian-American literature and American literature. All of these things are part of who I am and what I write.

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.

I am trying so very hard to stay in the moment despite the ferocity of my ambition.

My fiction is a very accurate reflection of the world we live in. Certainly, in some stories, that reflection is amplified but America elected a man who enjoys grabbing women by their pussies.

You have to be consistent. You have to be yourself. You have to be committed to what you're doing. You have to not be afraid to be ambitious.

I am a bad feminist and a good woman. I am trying to become better in how I think and say and do - without abandoning what makes me human.

The idea of life in France is a utopia where the women are beautiful and they eat cheese all day and wear designer clothes and are magically thin and more evolved. And that's wonderful. Over here, we're still fighting for birth control.

Twitter is my happy place. I am not there to overthink 140 characters.

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.

I live in the middle of nowhere and I'm an insomniac. I just make the time and I read and write really fast so that makes a lot possible for me. I wish I had an explanation for it. I'm grateful for it.

Violence is not the answer but neither is peace.

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."

Sex offers incredible narrative opportunities and so many emotions are tied up in sex. Also, I mean, the erotic is always a fun creative space.

I don't read the comments anymore, unless they are moderated. Which is not to say censored, but I don't need to read someone saying, "You're ugly."

I am new to superhero comics, though growing up I read Archie comics, religiously. I've been doing a lot of catching up, reading what's out there and it's been wonderful to see what's going on in contemporary comics.

I see my tweets as a current joining a bunch of other currents in the world's craziest ocean.

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

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.

Living in a rural town really compelled me to start tweeting so much. Mostly, my Twitter usage is fueled by loneliness. I can go days without talking to another human being unless it's my mother, especially when I'm not teaching or on break.

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.

I thought a lot about how so many memoirs about fatness focus on weight loss; they don't focus on living with weight in a world that is rather inhospitable to it. So I knew that was the idea that was going to be most interesting and most challenging, and I like to be challenged as a writer.

No woman or man is any one thing and the men in my stories, well, some of them are good and some of them are terrible, and most of them make the lives of the women they love much harder than need be. Why? Because that's the kind of storytelling I was drawn to when I wrote these stories, most of which are at least seven years or more old.

Good fiction challenges us as much as it entertains and these days, we could do with both of these things.

I don't want the success to go away. I don't want it to seem unearned.

I would love to see more acknowledgement of how challenging it is to feel positive about fatness when you can't find clothing. When there literally is not something made for your body. Nobody ever talks about that; all those fat girl clothes swaps and stuff are for a very specific kind of fat girl. If I was Lane Bryant fat, I would be joyful about fatness.

And all the women are feminine, so we never get to see masculine presenting women and we never get to frame that as beautiful, which it is, and that's incredibly frustrating, so for every gain or benefit that the internet offers there is a liability.

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.

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

Knowing that a story needs to be told is a great motivator, even if telling a given story comes at a price. Writing Hunger has been the most difficult writing of my life, and it's the rawest and perhaps most necessary. We'll see how people take it. I always strive to write beyond personal catharsis because though I write first and foremost for myself, I do recognize that I need to look outward as much if not more than I look inward, so the reader has something with which they can engage.

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.

It's a very weird cultural perception that if you're fat you're dumb, that you're lazy or a loser. Clearly, those are the preconditions for fatness. You're a failure, because only a lazy person, only a dumb person, would allow themselves to get into this situation. It's appalling that this is the mindset. People generally treat fat people like we don't know anything about anything. It's incredibly demeaning. And incredibly frustrating.

We have this cultural obsession with work and productivity as if we're better people if we don't stop and take some time for ourselves.

I never imagined that I would be the kind of person who is recognized when I am out and about just living my life.

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.

I look at my older writing to see where my weaknesses are and then I try to address those weaknesses and make new mistakes.

I don't ever rest. It's a problem and hopefully something I will get a better handle on in the coming years.

When I'm editing my work, I'm looking for everything to fit, to feel seamless, for every detail or line of dialogue or scene to feel necessary and organic. I approach the writing of others in much the same way while always working to preserve the writer's voice. To allow myself to be vulnerable on the page, I tell myself no one is going to read my work. There's no way I could put myself out there otherwise.

I am interested in intense, unbreakable emotional connections and oftentimes, such connections can be found between siblings.

I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

Truth can hurt so very much.

Whiteness is not the default in my fiction.

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.

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.

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.

I write because I love doing it.

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.

The other day, I saw a blog post where a woman wrote about why she was unfollowing me and that made me feel incredibly self-conscious and embarrassed about my tweets. I also feel more exposed now that I've become a more visible writer but then I try to get over all that and just use Twitter the way I want.

I never imagined any of the success I am currently experiencing.

People of color are not under any kind of obligation beyond working hard, doing their best, and learning from their mistakes.

I'll learn how to rest, though. I can still learn new tricks.

People do terrible things all the time, but we don’t regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things.

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

Fiction offers escape but it also interrogates the world we live in, whether the past, present or future.

It is deeply unfair to task writers of color with unique responsibilities that we don't assign to all writers.

What is it like to be connected to someone you can never get away from, for better or worse? I love trying to answer that question.

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.

I can't please everyone. I am trying not to let the pressure consume me.

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.

We assume whiteness is the default because whiteness, historically, has been the default. This is one of the many reasons diverse representation matters so much. We need to change the default.

The actual act of writing brings me such pleasure - to tell stories, to engage in cultural criticism, to reflect, to question, all of it is invigorating.

I don't know that anyone in the United States is taught to rest.

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

My dream was to write a book and see it published. I didn't dare imagine anything beyond that, so, I'm trying to keep my head on my shoulders.

My dad is a workaholic so I take after him in this respect.

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

I probably write the same story a hundred different ways. I suppose right now I am looking for the 101st different way to write that same story. And the 102nd, and 103rd and 111th and 133rd.

I think hunger is a natural state of being for most people. I mean, hunger is a desire - and you don't only have physical hunger, you have emotional hunger. A lot of my hungers are, in fact, emotional. I think a lot of fat people's hungers are emotional. There are things we very much want, and it can be so difficult to satisfy those hungers. Yet we try. We try so hard.

I'm fat positive, in that I don't see fat as a bad thing. But what I do see as a bad thing is how I'm treated. I can have the most positive outlook in the world, but that is not going to change how hecklers and people walking down the street are yelling at me.

Intellectually, I know I am worthy, however arbitrary a thing worthiness is, and have always been worthy.

I play on my phone in public quite a lot. I pretend that I'm getting a very important message that I must attend to immediately. You will often see me in the middle of a huge crowd just staring intently at my phone because I just don't even know how I should interact with other humans.

Generally, the ways we discuss the fat body pathologize it; we treat it as a medical problem and/or a social problem that must be solved. "Morbid obesity" is in many ways saying we are the walking dead. Or walking to our death. And that is no way to live, with that sort of moniker hanging over your head at all times. I think it forces fat people to internalize a lot of unnecessary self-loathing.

I love romantic comedies. I know how terrible they are, but I love them! And I don't think that makes me less of a feminist.

If I cannot rest and relax, all the work I do is for naught.

Nemeses aren't born. They are made.

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.

I write toward both idealism and reality - how things are and how I wish they could be.

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.

I read constantly because there is so much to learn from the writing in the world.

The designation is useful and necessary and sometimes limiting but it is only limiting to people who think, for example, that African-American literature couldn't possibly be something they could be interested in or relate to. They have limited imaginations, which is sad.

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

Books are often far more than just books.

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.