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

Roxane Gay

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Roxane Gay
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: October 15
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Scrabble Player
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Trying
Consume
Pressure
Please
Everyone

More quotes by Roxane Gay

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Nemeses aren't born. They are made.
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Feminism is definitely a part of everything I do.
Roxane Gay
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I approach most things in life with a dangerous level of confidence to balance my generally low self-esteem.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Diversity in literature is, in part, about representation - who is telling the stories and who stories are told about.
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People of color are not under any kind of obligation beyond working hard, doing their best, and learning from their mistakes.
Roxane Gay
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Most of the time, writing is a lot of fun, and not a small amount of self-medication.
Roxane Gay
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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.
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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.
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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.
Roxane Gay
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Readers need to stop assuming characters are white if race isn't explicitly defined.
Roxane Gay
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People do terrible things all the time, but we don’t regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things.
Roxane Gay
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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.
Roxane Gay
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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
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I see my tweets as a current joining a bunch of other currents in the world's craziest ocean.
Roxane Gay
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Fiction offers escape but it also interrogates the world we live in, whether the past, present or future.
Roxane Gay
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When you look past the image, a celebrity is merely a person you know nothing about.
Roxane Gay
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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