Roxane Quotes

#1. 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

#2. When I hear Roxane sing I am still able to think well of the world," Gen said. "This is a world in which she can still sing that music with so much compassion. That's proof of something, isn't it?

Ann Patchett

#3. 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

#4. There are writers who can show you the excellence of their brains and writers who show you the depths of their souls: I don't know any writer who does both at the same time as brilliantly as Roxane Gay.

Elizabeth McCracken

#5. Cyrano: The leaves
Roxane: What color
Perfect Venetian red! Look at them fall.
Cyrano: Yes
they know how to die. A little way
From the branch to the earth, a little fear
Of mingling with the common dust
and yet
They go down gracefully
a fall that seems
Like flying!

Edmond Rostand

#6. When you think of love you think as an American. You must think like a Russian. It is a more expansive view.'
'Americans havea bad habbit of thinking like Americans,' Roxane said kindly.

Ann Patchett

#7. Thank God Roxane Coss had not fallen in love with one of the Russians. She doubted they could make it up the stairs without stopping for a cigarette and telling at least one loud story that no one could understand.

Ann Patchett

#8. With prodigious bravery and eviscerating humor, Roxane Gay takes on culture and politics in Bad Feminist-and gets it right, time and time again. We should all be lucky enough to be such a bad feminist.

Ayelet Waldman

#9. 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

#10. 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.

Roxane Gay

#11. 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.

Roxane Gay

#12. 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.

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

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

Roxane Gay

#23. Beyonce is not above critique. As a feminist herself, I hope Beyonce would welcome it.

Roxane Gay

#24. I am mortified by my music choices.

Roxane Gay

#25. 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

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

Roxane Gay

#27. 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.

Roxane Gay

#28. Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. 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.

Roxane Gay

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. We were the only black family in my neighborhood for many years. Wherever we lived, we were often the only black family, and certainly the only Haitian family. But my parents were really great at providing a loving home where we could feel safe and secure.

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay

#34. Just because you survive something does not mean you are strong.

Roxane Gay

#35. Love your friends' kids, even if you don't want or like children. Just do it.

Roxane Gay

#36. I think it was really entering my 30s that I began to embrace feminism and call myself a feminist.

Roxane Gay

#37. 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

#38. 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

#39. 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

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

Roxane Gay

#41. 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.

Roxane Gay

#42. 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

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

Roxane Gay

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. In Hollywood, a normal-size body is unruly.

Roxane Gay

#48. 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

#49. 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

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. I think Lena Dunham is a very bright and very interesting writer, and what she's accomplished at such a young age absolutely impresses me.

Roxane Gay

#53. 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

#54. In truth, I don't care about making feminism more accessible to anyone.

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay

#56. 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.

Roxane Gay

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. Pink is my favourite colour. I used to say my favourite colour was black to be cool, but it is pink - all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink.

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay

#61. There are all kinds of people who continue to be largely ignored by advertisers, whose lives largely go unseen. They deserve their moment.

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay

#64. 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

#65. 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.

Roxane Gay

#66. 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

#67. 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

#68. 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.

Roxane Gay

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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.

Roxane Gay

#72. 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

#73. 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.

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay

#75. If we look too closely at many historical figures, we won't like what we see.

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay

#77. 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.

Roxane Gay

#78. In Haiti, beach bodies are simply bodies, and beach reads are simply books, because the beach is all around you.

Roxane Gay

#79. 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

#80. 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

#81. 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

#82. 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

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

Roxane Gay

#84. 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

#85. 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.

Roxane Gay

#86. 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

#87. I am not easy to love but I am well loved. I try to love well in return.

Roxane Gay

#88. 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.

Roxane Gay

#89. 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

#90. 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

#91. Violence is not the answer but neither is peace.

Roxane Gay

#92. What worries me is that 'post-racial' America is not that different from the Americas that have preceded us, and it might not ever be.

Roxane Gay

#93. 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

#94. 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.

Roxane Gay

#95. 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

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

Roxane Gay

#97. There has been, and there will continue to be, vigorous discussions about race in America. I worry that little will come of these discussions because we aren't addressing what must be done to change the current racial climate.

Roxane Gay

#98. 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

#99. We cannot sway extremists with rational thought or with our ideas of right and wrong.

Roxane Gay

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

Roxane Gay