Taylor M. Irwin

“So many years past being raped, I tell myself what happened is “in the past.” This is only partly true. In too many ways, the past is still with me. The past is written on my body. I carry it every single day. The past sometimes feels like it might kill me. It is a very heavy burden.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“I often tell my students that fiction is about desire in one way or another. The older I get, the more I understand that life is generally the pursuit of desires. We want and want and oh how we want. We hunger.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“It is dreadful to think that behind me my own past is no longer anything but shifting darkness.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“I am thinking about testimony I’ve heard from other women over the years—women sharing their truths, daring to use their voices to say, “This is what happened to me. This is how I have been wronged.” I’ve been thinking about how so much testimony is demanded of women, and still, there are those who doubt our stories.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body