Top 380 Roxane Gay Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Roxane Gay

52. “Don’t tear other women down, because even if they’re not your friends, they are women and this is just as important.”

— Roxane Gay

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

— Roxane Gay

54. “This is what most girls are taught – that we should be slender and small. We should not take up space. We should be seen and not heard, and if we are seen, we should be pleasing to men, acceptable to society. And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear, but it’s something that needs to be said, loudly, over and over again, so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us.”

— Roxane Gay

55. “My father believes hunger is in the mind. I know differently. I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.”

— Roxane Gay

56. “Trauma shapes all our lives, in so many ways. We are walking wounds, but I am not sure any of us know quite how to talk about it.”

— Roxane Gay

57. “I don’t read the comments anymore, unless they are moderated. Which is not to say censored, but I don’t need to read someone saying, “You’re ugly.””

— Roxane Gay

58. “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.”

— Roxane Gay

59. “I am a real survivor because I survived, even if some days it feels like I didn’t survive at all.”

— Roxane Gay

60. “With my tattoos, I get to say, these are choices I make for my body, with full-throated consent. This is how I mark myself. This is how I take my body back.”

— Roxane Gay

61. “The thing about fairy tales is that the princess finds her prince, but there’s generally a price to pay. A compromise of some kind is required for happily ever after. The woman in the fairy tale is generally the one who pays the price, which is such a rotten deal. This seems to be the nature of sacrifice in most matters.”

— Roxane Gay

62. “The boy I thought was my boyfriend pushed me to the ground. He took my clothes off, and I lay there with no body to speak of, just a flat board of skin and girl bones.”

— Roxane Gay

63. “I play on my phone in public quite a lot. I pretend that I’m getting a very important message that I must attend to immediately. You will often see me in the middle of a huge crowd just staring intently at my phone because I just don’t even know how I should interact with other humans.”

— Roxane Gay

64. “I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.”

— Roxane Gay

65. “I love being with someone who is endlessly interesting because we are so different. Wanting to belong to people or a person is not about finding a mirror image of myself.”

— Roxane Gay

66. “Feeling comfortable in my body isn’t entirely about beauty standards. It is not entirely about ideals. It’s about how I feel in my skin and bones, from one day to the next.”

— Roxane Gay

67. “Jesus is allowed table-flipping rage. We speak of men and their rage as if it is laudable. “Men just get mad and punch each other and it’s over,” we say. “Women are just bitches; they never let it go.” That’s because we never can let it go. Because where would we put it? What system? What faith? What institution has room? Has patience? Has understanding for an angry woman?”

— Roxane Gay

68. “All too often, when we see injustices, both great and small, we think, That’s terrible, but we do nothing. We say nothing. We let other people fight their own battles. We remain silent because silence is easier. Qui.”

— Roxane Gay

69. “There is an anxiety in being yourself, though. There is the haunting question of “What if?” always lingering. What if who I am will never be enough? What if I will never be right enough for someone?”

— Roxane Gay

70. “It took me a long time, but I prefer “victim” to “survivor” now. I don’t want to diminish the gravity of what happened. I don’t want to pretend I’m on some triumphant, uplifting journey. I don’t want to pretend that everything is okay. I’m living with what happened, moving forward without forgetting, moving forward without pretending I am unscarred. This.”

— Roxane Gay

71. “The frustrating thing about cages is that you’re trapped but you can see exactly what you want. You can reach out from the cage, but only so far.”

— Roxane Gay

72. “I believe women not just in the United States but throughout the world deserve equality and freedom but know I am in no position to tell women of other cultures what that equality and freedom should look like.”

— Roxane Gay

73. “It is a powerful lie to equate thinness with self-worth.”

— Roxane Gay

74. “It is more like carrying something really heavy, forever. You do not get to put it down: you have to carry it, and so you carry it the way you need to, however it fits best.”

— Roxane Gay

75. “I am not promiscuous with my warmth, but when I share it, my warmth can be as hot as the sun.”

— Roxane Gay

76. “Girl children are not safe in a world where there are men. They need to learn to be strong. There.”

— Roxane Gay

77. “Attending boarding school is how upper-middle-class girls run away, to be sure.”

— Roxane Gay

78. “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.”

— Roxane Gay

79. “Family is powerful, no matter what. We’re always tied together with our eyes and our lips and our blood and our bloody hearts.”

— Roxane Gay

80. “I love romantic comedies. I know how terrible they are, but I love them! And I don’t think that makes me less of a feminist.”

— Roxane Gay

81. “It’s scary, though, trying to be yourself and hoping yourself is enough. It’s scary believing that you, as you are, could ever be enough.”

— Roxane Gay

82. “Trigger warnings aren’t meant for those of us who don’t believe in them, just like the Bible wasn’t written for atheists. Trigger warnings are designed for the people who need and believe in that safety. Those of us who do not believe should have little say in the matter. We can neither presume nor judge what others might feel the need to be protected from.”

— Roxane Gay

83. “I don’t believe in safety. I wish I did. I am not brave. I simply know what to be scared of; I know to be scared of everything. There is freedom in that fear. That freedom makes it easier to appear fearless – to say and do what I want. I have been broken, so I am prepared should that happen again. I have, at times, put myself in dangerous situations. I have thought, You have no idea what I can take.”

— Roxane Gay

84. “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

85. “Doctors are supposed to first do no harm, but when it comes to fat bodies, most doctors seem fundamentally incapable of heeding their oath.”

— Roxane Gay

86. “If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities.”

— Roxane Gay

87. “If I must share my story, I want to do so on my terms, without the attention that inevitably follows. I do not want pity or appreciation or advice. I am not brave or heroic. I am not strong. I am not special. I am one woman who has experienced something countless women have experienced. I am a victim who survived. It could have been worse, so much worse. That’s.”

— Roxane Gay

88. “Angry women care. Angry women speak and yell and sob their truths.”

— Roxane Gay

89. “I am often drawn to unlikable characters, to those who behave in socially unacceptable ways, say whatever is on their mind, and do what they want with varying levels of regard for the consequences. 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.”

— Roxane Gay

90. “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.”

— Roxane Gay

91. “It is a powerful lie to equate thinness with self-worth. Clearly, this lie is damn convincing because the weight-loss industry thrives. Women continue to try to bend themselves to societal will. Women continue to hunger.”

— Roxane Gay

92. “Kindness bridges many differences too, and so does a love of One Tree Hill or Lost or beautiful books or terrible movies.”

— Roxane Gay

93. “Feminism has certainly helped me find my voice. Feminism has helped me believe my voice matters, even in this world where there are so many voices demanding to be heard.”

— Roxane Gay

94. “Writing, at its best and truest, can offer solace and salvation for both readers and writers.”

— Roxane Gay

95. “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

96. “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.”

— Roxane Gay

97. “For difficult women, who should be celebrated for their very nature.”

— Roxane Gay

98. “Sometimes, people who, I think, mean well like to tell me I am not fat. They will say things like, “Don’t say that about yourself,” because they understand “fat” as something shameful, something insulting, while I understand “fat” as a reality of my body. When I use the word, I am not insulting myself. I am describing myself.”

— Roxane Gay

99. “I often tell my students that fiction is about desire in one way or another. The older I get, the more I understand that life is generally the pursuit of desires. We want and want and oh how we want. We hunger.”

— Roxane Gay

100. “It is startling to realize that even Oprah, a woman in her early sixties, a billionaire and one of the most famous women in the world, isn’t happy with herself, her body.”

— Roxane Gay