"We don’t necessarily know how to hear stories about any kind of violence, because it is hard to accept that violence is as simple as it is complicated, that you can love someone who hurts you, that yo..."
- Roxane Gay
"I try to learn better, do better. I have no idea how I got to be the one at the front of the classroom, the one who gets to be in charge of things. Most of the time, I feel like the kid who gets to si..."
"Racism doesn’t care about respectability, wealth, education, or status"
"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 a..."
"There is no collective slavery revenge fantasy among black people, but I am certain, if there were one, it would not be about white people, not at all."
"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."
"I was always a good girl. I was a straight-A student, top of my class. I did as I was told. I was polite to my elders. I was good to my siblings. I went to church. It was very easy to hide how very ba..."
"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."
"The notion that I should be fine with the status quo even if I am not wholly affected by the status quo is repulsive."
"Human endurance fascinates me, probably too much because more often than not, I think of life in terms of enduring instead of living."