Roxane Gay Quotes

I like having my mistakes corrected, but I wonder if it's because you're forced to have a certain humility if you're not an affluent white man.

I am Hindu, upper-caste, male, and able-bodied. So everything is on my side. That gives me the extra cushion that Swara Bhaskar won't get.

If you're anything other than a white, cisgender, able-bodied dude, people are going to project narratives, imagery, and context onto you that you might not necessarily see for yourself.

I'd be lying if I did not say that being a woman of colour is something I am always mindful or aware of.

Identity politics is not politics at all, since it precisely negates the political as such by re-construing political positions in ethnic terms, subsuming 'ought' under 'is.'

I was ahead of the gender curve, but I wasn't ahead of the intersectionality curve, and I get it now. It's important to me.

Learning that someone is gay, queer, trans, doesn't tell you much by itself. They could be any kind of person aside from that particular slice of identity.

I talk about being a 'what' to people. Like, being gay in mainstream society is a different kind of 'what' than being black. They don't always jive. It's confusing and leads to these really awkward personal stories that have just been in me for awhile.

Inherently, having privilege isn't bad, but it's how you use it, and you have to use it in service of other people.

While I acknowledge that it's not my whiteness that has given me my platform entirely... it's part of the reason I've garnered so much acceptance and praise for being out and nonbinary.

For me, as an activist and a storyteller, I'm very centered in ensuring that we show the complicatedness of the human experience that happens to be rooted in my community's trans experiences.

The great thing about being a standard-issue, straight white person is you have so much time. Gay people, people of color, we have less time! We have to be a living Learning Annex to everybody. We don't have time to master hobbies like skipping rocks along lakes.

I see how people look at me, all around the world. They see something because of the race I belong to. I have to understand that and put it into my music.

There is still so much acceptance, representation and visibility needed for trans women of color and gender non-conforming people of color.

At least you know that you're crazy. That means you have the potential to recover.

I don't care if you're talking about gay, straight, black, white, how in the name of hell can you guarantee that nobody will ever feel unwelcome? I have felt it unwelcome everywhere I've been in life. Everybody else has, too. I mean, not everywhere, but it happens.

I have come to understand what being a public person means. I don't let things I can't do anything about bother me.

Whatever happens, whatever you experience, feel, think, do - it's always now. It's all there is. And if you continuously miss the now - resist it, dislike it, try to get away from it, reduce it to a means to an end, then you miss the essence of your life, and you are stuck in a dream world of images, concepts, labels, interpretations, judgments - the conditioned content of your mind that you take to be yourself.

Will power is nothing but another name of ego power. A man of wisdom has no will, just as he has no mind - because to will means to keep yourself separate from existence. It is a little subtle, but try to feel it. The moment you will it means you are always willing against things as they are. You want them to be some other way.

The truth is, everything that's happened was supposed to happen. That doesn't mean I don't look back and think, God, I wish I hadn't had to go through some of those things.

I've come to a much more controlled idea about death and loss, but I don't think it's possible to come to that much more controlled idea until you've gone through the crazy part . . . I don't mean that I'm controlled. I mean that I gave up the idea that I had control. That's the new control.

Through forgiveness, which essentially means recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is, the miracle of transformation happens not only within but also without.

I now know myself to be a person of weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I now know that to be whole means to reject none of it but to embrace all of it.

I hope the fact that I'm gay isn't the most interesting part of me.

Being present means being completely aware of all that is. It means you’re not in denial, you’re not pretending, and you’re not avoiding.