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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Understanding when to speak on an issue and when to listen and learn is an invaluable skill I continue to hone. At times, people treat me like an opinion vending machine, asking me what I think about their favorite television show or a politician running for office or a recent calamity, as if opinion writing is merely emotional utterance rather than a practice that requires care and consideration.”
― 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