Roxane Gay Quotes

I'm tired of feeling like I should be grateful when popular culture deigns to acknowledge the experiences of people who are not white, middle class or wealthy, and heterosexual.

We must stop pointing to the exceptions—these bright shining stars who transcend circumstance. We must look to how we can best support the least among us, not spend all our time blindly revering and trying to mimic the greatest without demanding systemic change.

Assuming Sandberg's advice is completely useless for working-class women is just as shortsighted as claiming her advice needs to be completely applicable to all women. And let’s be frank: if Sandberg chose to offer career advice for working-class women, a group she clearly knows little about, she would have been just as harshly criticized for overstepping her bounds.

Human endurance fascinates me, probably too much because more often than not, I think of life in terms of enduring instead of living.

The notion that I should be fine with the status quo even if I am not wholly affected by the status quo is repulsive.

I don’t put that pressure on myself (to write every day), but I do tend to write every day. It’s not pressure—it’s pressure release.

I was always a good girl. I was a straight-A student, top of my class. I did as I was told. I was polite to my elders. I was good to my siblings. I went to church. It was very easy to hide how very bad I was becoming from my family, from everyone. Being good is the best way to be bad.

I am quite content to be in my thirties, and nothing affirms that more than being around people in their late teens and early twenties.