Quotes from Roxane Gay

I can consider not only great art, but the context in which that art has been created. I can consider the people who paid a price for that art to be created and whether or not I want to appreciate that art on their backs.

I am totally down with disagreement. I don't like Haterade, but disagreement is wonderful. When someone disagrees, we try to reach common ground. That's good.

It's disheartening that people think that Donald Sterling is the outlier and that he's the exception and not the rule.

I try to understand faith and religion. I was raised by wonderful Catholic parents who were deeply faithful and taught us that God is a God of love.

In truth, I don't care about making feminism more accessible to anyone.

If a woman wants to take her husband's name, that's her choice, and I still think she can be feminist while doing that.

I would love for everyone to be a feminist, but I have to respect people's choices. If you don't want to be a feminist and don't want to claim feminism, that's entirely your right.

I think it was really entering my 30s that I began to embrace feminism and call myself a feminist.

I keep trying to imagine a universe in which too many public figures declaring themselves feminists would be a bad thing.

The open letter has always been an interesting rhetorical strategy - a way of delivering a pointed message to a specific individual or group while also reaching a wide audience.

I don't want the success to go away. I don't want it to seem unearned.

I approach most things in life with a dangerous level of confidence to balance my generally low self-esteem.

If I were ever to grace the pages of 'Vogue,' I would want my image retouched because the audience is so vast. There is great vulnerability in being exposed to that many judging eyes. I feel no small amount of guilt over this willingness to surrender my ideals.

People don't want to think... I mean, they don't! They just want to say, 'Oh, okay, feminists are humorless man-haters,' and that's simply not the case. There are radical people and radical ideas in absolutely every movement, but that doesn't mean they define the ideals.

We bear witness to the worst of human brutality, retweet what we have witnessed, and then we move on to the next atrocity. There is always more atrocity.

I think one of the most important things we can do as feminists is acknowledge that, even though we have womanhood in common, we have to start to think about the ways in which we're different, how those differences affect us, and what kinds of needs we have based on our differences.

Feminism is, I hope, a way to a better future for everyone who inhabits this world. Feminism should not be something that needs a seductive marketing campaign. The idea of women moving through the world as freely as men should sell itself.

I never imagined that I would be the kind of person who is recognized when I am out and about just living my life.

I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel. I don't want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption.

In Haiti, beach bodies are simply bodies, and beach reads are simply books, because the beach is all around you.

I'm sick of hearing, thinking and talking about Woody Allen. Nonetheless, the allegations against him continue to capture our national attention because so much of the story is strange and sordid.

We have this cultural obsession with work and productivity as if we're better people if we don't stop and take some time for ourselves.

I recognize that I'm human, and the older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am, how fallible we all are.

I have never been married. I don't know if I will ever marry, though I hope to. When I am asked why I have not married, I explain that my parents have been happily married for 42 years. The bar feels so very high for that kind of commitment.