Roxane Gay

“I think Lena Dunham is a very bright and very interesting writer, and what she's accomplished at such a young age absolutely impresses me.”

“I want characters to do bad things and get away with their misdeeds. I want characters to think ugly thoughts and make ugly decisions. I want characters to make mistakes and put themselves first without apologizing for it.”

“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.”

“A man has never told me he likes me. Like is more interesting than love.”

“Social media is something of a double-edged sword. At its best, social media offers unprecedented opportunities for marginalized people to speak and bring much needed attention to the issues they face. At its worst, social media also offers 'everyone' an unprecedented opportunity to share in collective outrage without reflection.”

“When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume, even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. I am mortified by my music choices.”

“How do we reconcile the imperfections of feminism with all the good it can do? In truth, feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed. For whatever reason, we hold feminism to an unreasonable standard where the movement must be everything we want and must always make the best choices. When feminism falls short of our expectations, we decide the problem is with feminism rather than with the flawed people who act in the name of the movement.”

“It sometimes feels like the workplace is immune from social upheaval. We go to work and do the best we can, and at the end of the day, we return to our lives. We don't abandon who we are, however, when we begin and end our workday. Who we are shapes how we are perceived in the workplace and, in turn, how we perform in the workplace.”

“To read narrowly and shallowly is to read from a place of ignorance.”

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

“Feminism's failings do not mean we should eschew feminism entirely. People do terrible things all the time, but we don't regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things. We should disavow the failures of feminism without disavowing its many successes and how far we have come.”

“Feminism will better succeed with collective effort, but feminist success can also rise out of personal conduct. I hear many young women say they can’t find well-known feminists with whom they identify. That can be disheartening, but I say, let us (try to) become the feminists we would like to see moving through the world.”

“I believe in the freedom of expression, unequivocally - though, as I have written before, I wish more people would understand that freedom of expression is not freedom from consequence.”

“I hate when people say something is not their job or that something isn't possible. We all say these things, sure, but some people actually believe they don't have to work beyond what is written in their job description or that they don't have to try to reach those who seemingly cannot be reached.”

“2014 was a year of intense social upheaval. In truth, the same could be said for most every year. There is no standstill in a world filled with so many people, scrambling for so much.”

“I will keep writing about these intersections as a writer and a teacher, as a black woman, as a bad feminist, until I no longer feel like what I want is impossible. I no longer want to believe that these problems are too complex for us to make sense of them.”

“Whenever governments wanted to achieve some end, often involving population growth, they restricted access to birth control and/or criminalized birth control unless, of course, the population growth concerned the poor, in which case, contraception was enthusiastically promoted. Historically, society has only wanted the "right kind of people" to have a right to life. We shouldn't forget that fact.”

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

“Sometimes, when you least expect it, you become the girl in the woods. You lose your name because another one is forced on you. You think you are alone until you find books about girls like you. Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds.”

“A lot of ink is given over to mythologizing female friendships as curious, fragile relationships that are always intensely fraught. Stop reading writing that encourages this mythology.”