602 Quotes by Roxane Gay

You are the joy in my life. I am a mess but I will be the joy in yours … When you touch me, you feel through me, through the ugliness beneath my skin, you make me feel, you hold me together, you push my skin back into its proper place. When you see me next, I will be wearing your ring on my left finger. I will say yes. You will hear me.

One of the many things I have always loved about writing, not to be confused with publishing, is that all you need is your imagination. It doesn't matter who you are, you can write. Your looks, especially, don't matter.

I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. 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.

Reading remains one of the purest things I do.

What may be most terrifying is just how real reality television is, after all. We say we watch these shows to feel better about ourselves, to have that reassurance that we are not that desperate. We are not that green. But perhaps we watch these shows because in the green girls interrupted, we see more than anything, the plainest selections of ourselves, garishly exposed but unfettered.

The ladies in her classes loved to speak to Caridad in broken Spanish, to show her they were comfortable with her ethnicity despite the paleness of their skin and the wealth of their husbands.

Words cannot fill the faithless with faith.

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.

I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.