Roxane Gay Quotes

If I'm writing strictly for others, how does that show what I'm experiencing or thinking? I just got to a point where I realized I could be as personal as I wanted to be and people could relate to those situations if they so choose.

I've talked with friends about this: when you write about yourself, that's what people connect to. When you write a sermon or a lesson, that may not reach people. I've learned a lot from people who have been writing about themselves.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

A work will only have deep resonance if the kind of darkness I can generate is something that is resident in me already.

I never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself.

I can only speak for myself and my own music, because that is what I am most familiar with, and I write about things that I am living or experiencing.

Anyone who wants to know who I am can just read my lyrics - I've always written about who I am.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

I think when you're telling a story from inside of you that's genuine, people connect with it.

I think that, for me, the great books like that, autobiographies, are great when the artists who write them throw caution to the wind and really put it out there as they saw it.

I've always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.

I have always written from a personal place.

Bleachers comes from a different place. It's personal. It's just me putting myself out there as myself. It's very intense.

I read a quote to the effect that we are always writing about ourselves no matter what we're doing. That may be so.

You just have to tell your authentic stories, and hopefully, it resonates. Whatever your story is, you just have to tell it authentically.

I share personal things about myself in the context of my interviews and in 'It's Messy' - but that's 20 percent of my life.

I gave myself the small task of writing honestly about the kind of life I knew. I believe there is some value in carrying out that task, however limited.

I've never been a confessional writer.

All good work requires self-revelation.

Memoir implies the need to reveal something about yourself - to recount your life for educational purposes.

My writing is authentic, and whatever happens in my life is what I write about.