Feminism is just an idea. It's a philosophy. It's about the equality of women in all realms. Furthermore, it's not about man-hating. Furthermore, it's not about being humorless. We have to let go of these misconceptions that have plagued feminism for 40, 50 years.

— Roxane Gay

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.

— Roxane Gay

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.

— Roxane Gay

For a moment, Milly couldn't breathe as her anger flew out of her chest and into her mouth. She ran her tongue over it, hard and bitter, then swallowed it again.

— Roxane Gay

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.

— Roxane Gay

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

— Roxane Gay

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.

— Roxane Gay

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.

— Roxane Gay

I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. Furthermore, I’m not trying to be an example. Furthermore, I am not trying to be perfect. Furthermore, I am not trying to say I have all the answers. Furthermore, I am not trying to say I’m right. Furthermore, I am just trying—trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.

— Roxane Gay

I followed many conversations about what happened in Norway and the death of Amy Winehouse because they happened one after the next. Too many of those conversations tried to conflate the two events, tried to create some kind of hierarchy of tragedy, grief, call, response. There was so much judgment, so much interrogation of grief—how dare we mourn a singer, an entertainer, a girl-woman who struggled with addiction, as if the life of an addict is somehow less worthy a life, as if we are not entitled to mourn unless the tragedy happens to the right kind of people. How dare we mourn a singer when across an ocean seventy-seven people are dead? We are asked these questions as if we only have the capacity to mourn one tragedy at a time, as if we must measure the depth and reach of a tragedy before deciding how to respond, as if compassion and kindness are finite resources we must use sparingly. We cannot put these two tragedies on a chart and connect them with a straight line. Furthermore, we cannot understand these tragedies neatly.

— Roxane Gay