If people cannot be flawed in fiction there's no place left for us to be human.

— Roxane Gay

I get angry when women disavow feminism and shun the feminist label but say they support all the advances born of feminism because I see a disconnect that does not need to be there.

— Roxane Gay

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.

— Roxane Gay

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

I knew I was in love with The Hunger Games when I did not want to get off the treadmill

— Roxane Gay

I love, but I am not entirely sure how to be loved: how to be seen and known for the utterly flawed woman I am. It demands surrender. It demands acknowledging that I am not perfect, but perhaps I deserve affection anyway.

— Roxane Gay

I'm tired of feeling like I should be grateful when popular culture deigns to acknowledge the experiences of people who are not white, middle class or wealthy, and heterosexual.

— Roxane Gay

In graduate school, early on, I once overheard a classmate talking in her office as I walked by. She didn't know I was there. She was gossiping about me to a group of our classmates & said I was the affirmative-action student... Rationally, I know it was absurd, but hearing how she & maybe others saw me hurt real bad... I stopped joking about being a slacker. I tripled the number of projects I was involved with. Furthermore, I was excellent most of the time. Furthermore, I fell short some of the time. Furthermore, I made sure I got good grades. Furthermore, I made sure my comprehensive exams were solid. Furthermore, I wrote conference proposals & had them accepted. Furthermore, I published. Furthermore, I designed an overly ambitious research project for my dissertation that kind of made me want to die. No matter what I did, I heard that girl, that girl who had accomplished a fraction of a fraction of what I had, telling a group of our peers I was the one who did not deserve to be in our program.

— Roxane Gay

I no longer want to believe these problems are too complex for us to make sense of them.

— Roxane Gay

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