Roxane Gay Quotes - Page 2

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Truth can hurt so very much.

Violence is not the answer but neither is peace.

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