n. > n.'s Quotes

“You hate America, don't you?'

That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.”
― Socrates

“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.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“...my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe...I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong. And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person. I’ve been in business without being a businesswoman, I’ve loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I’ve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I’ve done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice.”
― Coco Chanel

“Now I understand that one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I hated her as I had never hated anyone before—with her easy answers and maternal fussing. I wanted to slap her face, to make her crawl, and then to hold her in my arms and kiss her.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“The last time we were here,” I said, “I told you I liked you. I should have trusted myself to say I love you.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“When I was called a feminist, during those days, my first thought was, But I willingly give blow jobs. I had it in my head that I could not both be a feminist and be sexually open.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“In truth, feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“At some point, we have to stop selling every black child in this country the idea that he or she only needs to hold a ball or a microphone to achieve something.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“Privilege is a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor. There is racial privilege, gender (and identity) privilege, heterosexual privilege, economic privilege, able-bodied privilege, educational privilege, religious privilege, and the list goes on and on. At some point, you have to surrender to the kinds of privilege you hold. Nearly everyone, particularly in the developed world, has something someone else doesn’t, something someone else yearns for. The problem is, cultural critics talk about privilege with such alarming frequency and in such empty ways, we have diluted the word’s meaning. When people wield the word “privilege,” it tends to fall on deaf ears because we hear that word so damn much it has become white noise.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“Too many people have become self-appointed privilege police, patrolling the halls of discourse, ready to remind people of their privilege whether those people have denied that privilege or not. In online discourse, in particular, the specter of privilege is always looming darkly. When someone writes from experience, there is often someone else, at the ready, pointing a trembling finger, accusing that writer of having various kinds of privilege. How dare someone speak to a personal experience without accounting for every possible configuration of privilege or the lack thereof? We would live in a world of silence if the only people who were allowed to write or speak from experience or about difference were those absolutely without privilege.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“What about other women of color? For Hispanic and Latina women, Indian women, Middle Eastern women, Asian women, their absence in popular culture is even more pronounced, their need for relief just as palpable and desperate.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“If you're reading the find friends, you're in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn't "Is this a potential friend for me?" but "Is this character alive?”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“I am often drawn to unlikable characters, to those who behave in socially unacceptable ways, say whatever is on their mind, and do what they want with varying levels of regard for the consequences. I want characters to do bad things and get away with their misdeeds. I want characters to think ugly thoughts and make ugly decisions. I want characters to make mistakes and put themselves first without apologizing for it.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“Just because you survive something does not mean you are strong.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“But the more she talked, the less was I reassured, and I stopped her by asking: "Well, mother, am I white? Are you white?" She answered tremblingly: "No, I am not white, but you—your father is one of the greatest men in the country—the best blood of the South is in you—" This suddenly opened up in my heart a fresh chasm of misgiving and fear,”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“The man who has not loved before he was fourteen has missed a foretaste of Elysium.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“I felt leap within me pride that I was colored; and I began to form wild dreams of bringing glory and honor to the Negro race.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“For days I could talk of nothing else with my mother except my ambitions to be a great man, a great colored man, to reflect credit on the race and gain fame for myself.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“As I grew older, my love for reading grew stronger. I read with studious interest everything I could find relating to colored men who had gained prominence. My heroes had been King David, then Robert the Bruce; now Frederick Douglass was enshrined in the place of honor.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“I have since learned that this ability to laugh heartily is, in part, the salvation of the American Negro; it does much to keep him from going the way of the Indian.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“It is a struggle; for though the white man of the South may be too proud to admit it, he is, nevertheless, using in the contest his best energies; he is devoting to it the greater part of his thought and much of his endeavor.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“When one has seen something of the world and human nature, one must conclude, after all, that between people in like stations of life there is very little difference the world over.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“New York had impressed me as a place where there was lots of money and not much difficulty in getting it.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“I lived to learn that in the world of sport all men win alike, but lose differently;”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man