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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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Roxane Gay
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: October 15
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Scrabble Player
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Best
Hard
Obligation
Kind
Mistakes
People
Beyond
Color
Learning
Mistake
Working

More quotes by Roxane Gay

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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
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Books are often far more than just books.
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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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 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
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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.
Roxane Gay
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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
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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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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
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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
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If I cannot rest and relax, all the work I do is for naught.
Roxane Gay
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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.
Roxane Gay
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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
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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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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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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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Most of my favorite tweets go completely ignored but most of my favorite tweets are probably really lame or inside jokes between me and my [redacted]. See what I did there?
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
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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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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