Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
So often feminism is built up as this thing where you have to be perfect. You have to be consistent and you can't ever deviate. That's just not realistic.
I read too many romance novels during my formative years. I have a penchant for romantic comedies. I understand why 'Romeo and Juliet' came to such a pass.
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.
I am totally down with disagreement. I don't like Haterade, but disagreement is wonderful. When someone disagrees, we try to reach common ground. That's good.
As I started to think about how I can claim feminism while also acknowledging my humanity and my imperfections, 'bad feminism' simply seemed like the best answer.
It's so hard to write about countries like Haiti because there's truths behind the misperceptions people have. But there's so much more. There are multiple truths.
When advertisers ignore diversity, it is because they don't think the lives of others matter. There is not enough of a financial imperative for those lives to matter.
Pink is my favourite colour. I used to say my favourite colour was black to be cool, but it is pink - all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink.
We have cellphones and smartphones and iDevices and laptops and the ability to be perpetually connected. We never have to miss anything, significant or insignificant.
I've always wanted to be a writer. I've been writing since I was probably four years old - it was nonsense, but it was still my little attempts at being a storyteller.
There's certainly a portion of my brain that is always tuned to making wry observations about the world, but that portion of my brain was alive and well before Twitter.
Most of my favorite tweets go completely ignored but most of my favorite tweets are probably really lame or inside jokes between me and my [redacted]. See what I did there?
Placing Margaret Sanger on the $20 bill will remind us of what she has done for women and our reproductive health and how the fight for reproductive freedom is an ongoing one.
The open letter has always been an interesting rhetorical strategy - a way of delivering a pointed message to a specific individual or group while also reaching a wide audience.
When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume, even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. I am mortified by my music choices.
When I write on Twitter, I do other things: I'm working, grading, or reading, and I'm procrastinating, and I'll pop on Twitter and be like, "Hey, what's up? Yogurt's delicious."
That's what is always fascinating about racism - how it is allowed, if not encouraged, to flourish freely in public spaces, the way racism and bigotry are so often unquestioned.
I would love for everyone to be a feminist, but I have to respect people's choices. If you don't want to be a feminist and don't want to claim feminism, that's entirely your right.
2014 was a year of intense social upheaval. In truth, the same could be said for most every year. There is no standstill in a world filled with so many people, scrambling for so much.
A lot of ink is given over to mythologizing female friendships as curious, fragile relationships that are always intensely fraught. Stop reading writing that encourages this mythology.
Feminism has neglected the needs of woman of color and people of color in general. But I don't think it means that we should overlook feminism as having nothing valuable to contribute.
I believe in the freedom of expression, unequivocally - though, as I have written before, I wish more people would understand that freedom of expression is not freedom from consequence.
It's gut instinct that helps me determine how to write a story. I love the surreal because I am faced with the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. That challenge is thrilling.
Emotionally, my ambition is not yet sated. Emotionally, I still feel like a kid at the adult's table, yearning for recognition. I'm not sure where this all comes from but it is how I feel.
I probably write the same story a hundred different ways. I suppose right now I am looking for the 101st different way to write that same story. And the 102nd, and 103rd and 111th and 133rd.
My fiction is a very accurate reflection of the world we live in. Certainly, in some stories, that reflection is amplified but America elected a man who enjoys grabbing women by their pussies.
We assume whiteness is the default because whiteness, historically, has been the default. This is one of the many reasons diverse representation matters so much. We need to change the default.
I think there are a lot of rules for women. We have a lot of expectations and a lot of rules for women. So we're expected to march in a straight line, and when we don't, all hell breaks loose.
I was in love with the idea of love, so I created elaborate fictions for my relationships - fictions that allowed me to believe that what any given paramour and I shared looked a lot like love.
I'm sick of hearing, thinking and talking about Woody Allen. Nonetheless, the allegations against him continue to capture our national attention because so much of the story is strange and sordid.
The more successful I get, the more I am reminded that in the minds of a great many people I will never be anything more than my body. No matter what I accomplish, I will be fat, first and foremost.
There is an odd assumption that compassion and care are finite or that critics can be everything to everyone - commenting on everything simply because they can. That's not what cultural criticism is.
I live in the middle of nowhere and I'm an insomniac. I just make the time and I read and write really fast so that makes a lot possible for me. I wish I had an explanation for it. I'm grateful for it.
I have known beaches, but I have no particular fondness for them. I don't like sand in my crevices. I don't like sand at all. I don't enjoy all that sunshine and heat without the benefit of climate control.
I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.
The expansive anarchy of the Internet continues to lull us into believing that, because we can see something, that something should be seen. Because we can say something, there is something that must be said.
I am 39. I am single. I am a black woman. I have too many advanced degrees. Many a news story tells me finding true love is likely a hopeless proposition. Now is the time when I need to believe in fairy tales.
I believe women not just in the United States but throughout the world deserve equality and freedom but know I am in no position to tell women of other cultures what that equality and freedom should look like.
I am new to superhero comics, though growing up I read Archie comics, religiously. I've been doing a lot of catching up, reading what's out there and it's been wonderful to see what's going on in contemporary comics.
I think that everyone in one way or another has some sort of body issue. There's something about themselves physically that they're not happy with, that they're ashamed of, that they keep constantly trying to change.
I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel. I don't want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption.
I support anything that broadens the message of gender equality and tempers the stigma of the feminist label. We run into trouble, though, when we celebrate celebrity feminism while avoiding the actual work of feminism.
I am fine with my books being categorized as African-American literature but I hope they are also considered Haitian-American literature and American literature. All of these things are part of who I am and what I write.
I love, but I am not entirely sure how to be loved: how to be seen and known for the utterly flawed woman I am. It demands surrender. It demands acknowledging that I am not perfect, but perhaps I deserve affection anyway.
I can consider not only great art, but the context in which that art has been created. I can consider the people who paid a price for that art to be created and whether or not I want to appreciate that art on their backs.
We all have our vanities. The retouching magazines like 'Vogue' do is the professional version of the retouching we do when we, for example, apply Instagram filters to the pictures we take and share on our social networks.
There has been, and there will continue to be, vigorous discussions about race in America. I worry that little will come of these discussions because we aren't addressing what must be done to change the current racial climate.
I love how I can see [on Twitter] some of the thoughts and ideas of my favorite cultural figures and still also chatter with my friends and family. It's a cocktail party with a fraction of the awkwardness of an actual cocktail party.
You can't control the fact that you are born a white man or born into wealth. When people say, 'Check your privilege,' they're saying, 'Acknowledge how these factors helped you move through life.' They're not saying apologize for it.
The idea of life in France is a utopia where the women are beautiful and they eat cheese all day and wear designer clothes and are magically thin and more evolved. And that's wonderful. Over here, we're still fighting for birth control.