Opinions Quotes

“Every day, I try to make the best decisions possible about what I create, what I consume, and who I collaborate with - but living in the world, participating in capitalism, requires moral compromise. I am not looking for purity; it doesn't exist. Instead, I'm trying to do the best I can, and take a stand when I think I can have an impact.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“I have never dreamed of being a princess. I have not longed for Prince Charming. But I do long for something resembling a happily ever after. I am supposed to be above such flights of fantasy, but I am not. I am enamored of fairy tales.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“The freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from consequence. You can speak our mind, but you can also be shunned. You can be criticized. You can be ignored or ridiculed. You can lose your job. The freedom of speech does not exist in a vacuum.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“Avoid creating a hierarchy of human suffering as if compassion were a finite resource.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“I am often interested in identity politics. That phrase is often weaponized to dismiss the concerns and lived experiences of marginalized people. It is used to derail conversations about how identity shapes the way we move through the world and the way the world moves through us. It is an accusation that implies that we can somehow separate ourselves from the very things that contribute to who we are. It implies that we can’t both acknowledge and embrace our identities and be part of a broader community. To decry identity politics, to suggest you are not political, that you are simply human before anything else is, in fact, an identity politic. And that in itself interests me, as one of the ways that people can so utterly lack self-awareness while denying the lived experiences of everyone different from them.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“And other times I get angry, because anger is an entirely appropriate response to bigotry, systemic bias, and injustice.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“Demands for solidarity can quickly turn into demands for groupthink, making it difficult to express nuance.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“When students leave my classroom, any classroom, they have to and should face the real world, the best and worst of it. I can only hope they are adequately prepared to navigate the world as it is rather than how we wish it could be. But I also hope they are both realistic and idealistic. I hope that, like me, they search for safety, or work to create a world where some measure of safety, not to be confused with anything as infantile as coddling, is an inalienable right.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“As a teacher, I think carefully about the intellectual space I want to foster in my classroom -- a space where debate, dissent ad even protest are encouraged. I want to challenge students and be challenged. I don't want to shape their opinions. I want to shape how they articulate and support those opinions.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“Technology has made the world a panopticon. It has widened the range of who watches and who is watched.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“In his impassioned new memoir”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“instead of this indelible part of our present. Black people forgive because we need to survive. We have to forgive time and time again while racism or white silence in the face of racism continues to thrive. We have had to forgive slavery”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“Some days”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“Lately”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“L.G.B.T.Q. officers are more than welcome to join Pride celebrations—unarmed and in civilian clothing. They are being asked to confront their complicity with an institution that does more harm than good to vulnerable communities. It is telling that some of these officers refuse to do so.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“the world is on fire both literally and figuratively. This is the world into which these new graduates are entering and the world in which they’ll begin their careers. They are going to have to grapple with all of it. And so are we.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“So much of what is possible is”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“in waiting. Black boys in particular are never allowed to be boys. Manhood is ascribed to black boys because we are part of a culture where innocence and blackness are seen as antithetical.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“There is also this. Those who mock the idea of safe space are most likely the same people who are able to take safety for granted. That’s what makes discussions of safety and safe spaces so difficult. We are also talking about privilege.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places,” Ernest Hemingway wrote.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“I have come to crave safety, the idea that I can live free from physical or emotional harm. As an adult, I understand that there is no such thing as safety, that safety is promised to no one, but oh the idea of it remains so lovely, so elusive.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“Demands for solidarity can quickly turn into demands for groupthink, making it difficult to express nuance. It puts the terms of our understanding of the situation”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“I wish more people would understand that freedom of expression is not freedom from consequence.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“news networks. And then we have the commentary. There is the spectacle, and then we must deliberate on the spectacle. We must demand that our favorite thinkers offer their deliberations, whether they are qualified or not, as if we cannot truly make sense of a spectacle until we are told how to do so.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“wrong and that democracy is vastly better than fascism. That said, I would like to believe my opinions have evolved, that my thinking grows more nuanced. And so I say that while my opinions haven’t changed, I did the best I could with the knowledge and skill I had at the time. And I continue to write that way. Regardless of how I’m expressing my opinions, I am always, always trying my best.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“I am often asked if I have changed my mind about any of my opinions. Generally, people want to hear that yes, I have, as if an opinion is a temporary thing to be overcome. And though I hate to disappoint anyone, I cannot say I have.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“I write toward spaces where being raucous and ungovernable is seen as an asset rather than a liability. I write with care and consideration. I write knowing I am fallible.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“Opinionated people of a certain ilk often lament the “good old days” of discourse when everyone, regardless of affiliations and persuasions, listened to and respected one another. I’m not really sure those days ever existed for women or people of color or queer people or anyone else living in the margins.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“am often accused of being angry because I write about infuriating problems. I bristle at this accusation, because it is one. There is always the implication that anger is wrong, unbecoming, inappropriate. Being called angry is not a compliment; it is a warning that I’m overstepping, that I don’t know my place—even though I absolutely know that my place is wherever I choose to be.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“I have a voice and dare to use it and know my voice is being heard. On the page, I get to be the boldest, most audacious version of myself.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business