Quote

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

Roxane Gay

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Roxane Gay
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: October 15
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Scrabble Player
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Regularly
Terrible
Humanity
Things
Time
People
Disavow
Disown

More quotes by Roxane Gay

Image
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
Image
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
Image
I don't want the success to go away. I don't want it to seem unearned.
Roxane Gay
Image
Some women being empowered does not prove the patriarchy is dead. It proves that some of us are lucky.
Roxane Gay
Image
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.
Roxane Gay
Image
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.
Roxane Gay
Image
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
Image
Fiction offers escape but it also interrogates the world we live in, whether the past, present or future.
Roxane Gay
Image
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.
Roxane Gay
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Roxane Gay
Image
Diversity in literature is, in part, about representation - who is telling the stories and who stories are told about.
Roxane Gay
Image
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.
Roxane Gay
Image
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.
Roxane Gay
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People of color are not under any kind of obligation beyond working hard, doing their best, and learning from their mistakes.
Roxane Gay
Image
Twitter is my happy place. I am not there to overthink 140 characters.
Roxane Gay
Image
Feminism is definitely a part of everything I do.
Roxane Gay