Roxane Gay
Knowing that a story needs to be told is a great motivator, even if telling a given story comes at a price. Writing Hunger has been the most difficult writing of my life, and it's the rawest and perhaps most necessary. We'll see how people take it. I always strive to write beyond personal catharsis because though I write first and foremost for myself, I do recognize that I need to look outward as much if not more than I look inward, so the reader has something with which they can engage.Collection: Writing
I would like to believe that most people, regardless of gender, are good and kind. The good men in my stories are the rule. It's the bad men that are the exception and because I tend toward the dark in my fiction, you see more of the exception than the rule.Collection: Believe
Generally, the ways we discuss the fat body pathologize it; we treat it as a medical problem and/or a social problem that must be solved. "Morbid obesity" is in many ways saying we are the walking dead. Or walking to our death. And that is no way to live, with that sort of moniker hanging over your head at all times. I think it forces fat people to internalize a lot of unnecessary self-loathing.Collection: Thinking
My dream was to write a book and see it published. I didn't dare imagine anything beyond that, so, I'm trying to keep my head on my shoulders.Collection: Dream
Most of the time, writing is a lot of fun, and not a small amount of self-medication.Collection: Fun
The actual act of writing brings me such pleasure - to tell stories, to engage in cultural criticism, to reflect, to question, all of it is invigorating.Collection: Writing
The designation is useful and necessary and sometimes limiting but it is only limiting to people who think, for example, that African-American literature couldn't possibly be something they could be interested in or relate to. They have limited imaginations, which is sad.Collection: Thinking
And all the women are feminine, so we never get to see masculine presenting women and we never get to frame that as beautiful, which it is, and that's incredibly frustrating, so for every gain or benefit that the internet offers there is a liability.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Real
We assume whiteness is the default because whiteness, historically, has been the default. This is one of the many reasons diverse representation matters so much. We need to change the default.Collection: Needs
To have privilege in one or more areas does not mean you are wholly privileged. Surrendering to the acceptance of privilege is difficult, but it is really all that is expected. What I remind myself, regularly, is this: the acknowledgment of my privilege is not a denial of the ways I have been and am marginalized, the ways I have suffered.Collection: Mean
Don’t flirt, have sex, or engage in emotional affairs with your friends’ significant others. This shouldn’t need to be said, but it needs to be said. That significant other is an asshole, and you don’t want to be involved with an asshole who’s used goods. If you want to be with an asshole, get a fresh asshole of your very own. They are abundant.Collection: Sex
Intellectually, I know I am worthy, however arbitrary a thing worthiness is, and have always been worthy.Collection: Arbitrary
The past is always with you. Some people want to be protected from this truth.Collection: Past
I think hunger is a natural state of being for most people. I mean, hunger is a desire - and you don't only have physical hunger, you have emotional hunger. A lot of my hungers are, in fact, emotional. I think a lot of fat people's hungers are emotional. There are things we very much want, and it can be so difficult to satisfy those hungers. Yet we try. We try so hard.Collection: Mean
I write for myself, first and foremost and I also write for people, mostly women, who just want to be seen and heard and all too often aren't.Collection: Writing
If I cannot rest and relax, all the work I do is for naught.Collection: Relax
It's a very weird cultural perception that if you're fat you're dumb, that you're lazy or a loser. Clearly, those are the preconditions for fatness. You're a failure, because only a lazy person, only a dumb person, would allow themselves to get into this situation. It's appalling that this is the mindset. People generally treat fat people like we don't know anything about anything. It's incredibly demeaning. And incredibly frustrating.Collection: People
When you look past the image, a celebrity is merely a person you know nothing about.Collection: Past
Diversity in literature is, in part, about representation - who is telling the stories and who stories are told about.Collection: Diversity
I thought a lot about how so many memoirs about fatness focus on weight loss; they don't focus on living with weight in a world that is rather inhospitable to it. So I knew that was the idea that was going to be most interesting and most challenging, and I like to be challenged as a writer.Collection: Loss
I would love to see more acknowledgement of how challenging it is to feel positive about fatness when you can't find clothing. When there literally is not something made for your body. Nobody ever talks about that; all those fat girl clothes swaps and stuff are for a very specific kind of fat girl. If I was Lane Bryant fat, I would be joyful about fatness.Collection: Girl
My fiction is a very accurate reflection of the world we live in. Certainly, in some stories, that reflection is amplified but America elected a man who enjoys grabbing women by their pussies.Collection: Reflection
It is deeply unfair to task writers of color with unique responsibilities that we don't assign to all writers.Collection: Responsibility
I am trying so very hard to stay in the moment despite the ferocity of my ambition.Collection: Ambition
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.Collection: Phones
When I'm editing my work, I'm looking for everything to fit, to feel seamless, for every detail or line of dialogue or scene to feel necessary and organic. I approach the writing of others in much the same way while always working to preserve the writer's voice. To allow myself to be vulnerable on the page, I tell myself no one is going to read my work. There's no way I could put myself out there otherwise.Collection: Writing
Sex offers incredible narrative opportunities and so many emotions are tied up in sex. Also, I mean, the erotic is always a fun creative space.Collection: Fun
It's gut instinct that helps me determine how to write a story. I love the surreal because I am faced with the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. That challenge is thrilling.Collection: Writing
The other day, I saw a blog post where a woman wrote about why she was unfollowing me and that made me feel incredibly self-conscious and embarrassed about my tweets. I also feel more exposed now that I've become a more visible writer but then I try to get over all that and just use Twitter the way I want.Collection: Self
Truth can hurt so very much.Collection: Hurt
Violence is not the answer but neither is peace.Collection: Answers
I'll learn how to rest, though. I can still learn new tricks.Collection: Tricks
We don't all have to believe in the same feminism. Feminism can be pluralistic so long as we respect the different feminisms we carry with us, so long as we give enough of a damn to try to minimize the fractures among us. Feminism will better succeed with collective effort, but feminist success can also rise out of personal conduct.Collection: Women
There's certainly a portion of my brain that is always tuned to making wry observations about the world, but that portion of my brain was alive and well before Twitter.Collection: Brain
Living in a rural town really compelled me to start tweeting so much. Mostly, my Twitter usage is fueled by loneliness. I can go days without talking to another human being unless it's my mother, especially when I'm not teaching or on break.Collection: Mother
My tweeting is cool and calm unless I am riled up about something and then I just surrender to the fury of my fingers.Collection: Calm
Twitter has allowed the conversation to broaden and become more inclusive. At times, the conversation is really tense but that's because we're talking about really important issues. It's not going to be easy but at least the conversations are happening.Collection: Talking
Most of my favorite tweets go completely ignored but most of my favorite tweets are probably really lame or inside jokes between me and my [redacted]. See what I did there?Collection: Lame
I see my tweets as a current joining a bunch of other currents in the world's craziest ocean.Collection: Ocean
I was called a feminist, and what I heard was, 'You are an angry, sex-hating, man-hating victim lady person.' This caricature is how feminists have been warped by the people who fear feminism most, the same people who have the most to lose when feminism succeeds.Collection: Sex
I live in the middle of nowhere and I'm an insomniac. I just make the time and I read and write really fast so that makes a lot possible for me. I wish I had an explanation for it. I'm grateful for it.Collection: Grateful
I love how I can see [on Twitter] some of the thoughts and ideas of my favorite cultural figures and still also chatter with my friends and family. It's a cocktail party with a fraction of the awkwardness of an actual cocktail party.Collection: Party
I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Fall
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.Collection: Romantic Love
I am interested in intense, unbreakable emotional connections and oftentimes, such connections can be found between siblings.Collection: Sibling
Readers need to stop assuming characters are white if race isn't explicitly defined.Collection: Character
People of color are not under any kind of obligation beyond working hard, doing their best, and learning from their mistakes.Collection: Mistake