Roxane Gay Quotes

The bully pulpit is not an open microphone. You have to target it very carefully.

Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they’re arguing.

I'm manipulating the audience. I'm making sure people sympathize.

When we as a society lose the ability to comment on what we see and to have an opinion on what we are exposed to, then we have all lost what makes us unique on this planet.

The best story is the story that gets to the most people.

I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in.

Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.

The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation.

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

My fans want me to talk to them. And even if they want to be critical, I want to hear what they've got to say.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

If you want to communicate with the American public, the literature tells you you've got to be talking at about a sixth-grade, seventh-grade level.

I wanted to make films that were culturally relevant in my own country, that challenged people, and that people talked about.

Criticism, any amount, we welcome it. Come, let's have a discussion - in Parliament, all the better.

I think TV, at least most immediately, perhaps more so than film, is a reflection of society.

I'll talk all this craziness in my music, but when I have your attention, and you're listening to me, I'll talk about what I want to talk about and what I think we need to address.

Cinema is a reflection of society and, in most cases, has the ability to be a mirror and not just show the problems but also give solutions and help them reach a large number of people through faces and voices that matter.

I have been fortunate that publications like the 'New York Times' and 'The Wall Street Journal' have allowed me to share some of my opinions with a wider audience.

I like to do shows that open a dialogue.

Film is one small voice in a great cacophony of noise from newspapers, from the television, from social media, so it can have a little dent, you know? It can help to create a climate of opinion.

We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.

As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy.

I think you can talk about anything if the context is correctly arranged. If you set up the context and you bring the audience along carefully enough with you, you can get them to cross the line with you. What I try to do is talk about things that bother me, and I hope that in doing so I bother other people.

Structure your presentation so that you appeal to the different interests of the different decision-makers involved.

I knew if I continued to look around it would be difficult for me to contain my own emotions. So I turned away from the red eyes of the crowd and looked only at the red eye of the camera, talking to all the nation.