Roxane Gay Quotes

It makes perfect sense that many of us obsess over our bodies. There is nothing more inescapable. Our bodies moves us through our lives. They bring pleasure and pain. Sometimes our bodies serve us well, and other times our bodies become terribly incovenient. There are times when our bodies betray us or our bodies are betrayed by others. I think about my body all the time - how it looks, how it feels, how I can make it smaller, what I should put into it, what I am putting into it, what has been done to it, what I do to it, what I let others do to it. This bodily preoccupation is exhausting.

To change the world, we need to face what has become of it. To heal from a trauma, we need to understand the extent of it.

"We tend to believe that accusations of privilege imply we have it easy, which we resent because life is hard for nearly everyone. Of course we resent these accusations. Look at white men when they are accused of having privilege. They tend to be immediately defensive (and, at times, understandably so). They say, "It's not my fault I'm a white man," or "I'm [insert other condition that discounts their privilege]," instead of simply accepting that, in this regard, yes, they benefit from certain privileges others do not. To have privilege in one or more areas does not mean you are wholly privileged. Surrendering to the acceptance of privilege is difficult, but it is really all that is expected. What I remind myself, regularly, is this: the acknowledgement of my privilege is not a denial of the ways I have been and am marginalized, the ways I have suffered."

Sometimes we try to convince ourselves of things that are not true, reframing the past to better explain the present.

I look at some of my worst relationships and think, At least they didn’t hit me. I work from a place of gratitude for the bare minimum. Since then I’ve never been in a relationship where I’ve had to hide nonconsensual bruises. I’ve never feared for my life. I’ve never been in a situation where I couldn’t walk away. Does this make me a lucky girl? Given the stories I’ve heard from other women, yes, it does make me a lucky girl. This is not how we should measure luck.

Every day, I try to make the best decisions possible about what I create, what I consume, and who I collaborate with - but living in the world, participating in capitalism, requires moral compromise. I am not looking for purity; it doesn't exist. Instead, I'm trying to do the best I can, and take a stand when I think I can have an impact.

What a privilege it is to be able to say it’s hard to hear someone’s story.

I get so scared but the world somehow makes sense there. Being with you feels like that.

floccinaucinihilipilification — the action or habit of estimating something as worthless.

Writers cannot protect their readers from themselves, nor should they be expected to.

Everyone was so worried about me when I broke my ankle and it confused me. I have a huge, loving family and a solid circle of friends, but these things were something of an abstraction, something to take for granted, and then all of a sudden, they weren't... There were lots of concerned texts and e-mails, and I had to face something I've long pretended wasn't true, for reasons I don't fully understand. If i died, I would leave people behind who would struggle with my loss. I finally recognized that I matter to the people in my life and that I have a responsibility to matter to myself and take care of myself so they don't have to lose me before my time, so I can have more time. When I broke my ankle, love was no longer an abstraction. It became this real, frustrating, messy, necessary thing, and I had a lot of it in my life. It was an overwhelming thing to realize. I am still trying to make sense of it all even though it has always been there.

Celebrities understand the economy of thinness, and most of them are willing to participate in that economy, taking to social media, where they pose for selfies with their cheeks sucked in to make themselves appear even gaunter. The less space they take up, the more they matter.

Feminists are celebrating our victories and acknowledging our privilege when we have it. We’re simply refusing to settle. We’re refusing to forget how much work there is yet to be done. We’re refusing to relish the comforts we have at the expense of the women who are still seeking comfort.

I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions. There are many ways in which I am doing feminism wrong, at least according to the way my perceptions of feminism have been warped by being a woman.

A woman who cleaned their homes had such a naturally fine body while they stretched themselves taut with the finest surgeons in South Florida and didn't look half as good. It wasn't fair. Money was supposed to make things fair.