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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
Consume
Pressure
Please
Everyone
Trying

More quotes by Roxane Gay

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If I cannot rest and relax, all the work I do is for naught.
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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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.
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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.
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I read constantly because there is so much to learn from the writing in the world.
Roxane Gay
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Books are often far more than just books.
Roxane Gay
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I am fine with my books being categorized as African-American literature but I hope they are also considered Haitian-American literature and American literature. All of these things are part of who I am and what I write.
Roxane Gay
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Good fiction challenges us as much as it entertains and these days, we could do with both of these things.
Roxane Gay
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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
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I approach most things in life with a dangerous level of confidence to balance my generally low self-esteem.
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 don't want the success to go away. I don't want it to seem unearned.
Roxane Gay
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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
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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
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Some women being empowered does not prove the patriarchy is dead. It proves that some of us are lucky.
Roxane Gay
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Feminism is definitely a part of everything I do.
Roxane Gay
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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
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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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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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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