Roxane Gay Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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