Tavi Gevinson Quotations

I have a problem with people saying feminine means anti-feminist, and I think it's counter-productive to immediately associate anything 'girly' with vanity or stupidity.

I'm not obsessively a follower of fashion in the way I used to be. But I still have all those magazines I bought at the time because I bought ones that felt a little timeless, more like books.

Sometimes you want something really serious that makes you feel emotional and makes you think, and sometimes you do just want a pop song. What I love about Taylor Swift is that she offers both.

It brings me no joy and not enough comfort to dwell too much on things I've said or written or made or worn in the past.

I am a Justin Bieber fan, but I am also so fascinated by how weird pop music can be and how manipulated it can be, so I enjoy thinking about that side of it too. I feel bad for him. I could never imagine growing up that way.

Feminism to me means fighting. It's a very nuanced, complex thing, but at the very core of it I'm a feminist because I don't think being a girl limits me in any way.

Oh God, I'm awful at sports. In gym I just try and avoid getting hit in the face.

When you're a kid you're already trying to create your own world and organize the one in front of you, but then you get all insecure around 6th grade and don't think you have a right to share that.

I try to be very honest in my writing. It's amazing, though, to think that people are responding to what we do, but it's okay if they're responding in a positive way too, because I think just creating anything at all to put out there is a gift.

If I'm extremely bored and I don't have a book with me and I'm being an obnoxious teenager, I'll read 'BuzzFeed' on my phone. But even that just leaves me feeling icky because I think for some reason my comfort zone is to just not really be in the loop about stuff like awards shows or things like that.

I think that everybody wants to be heard, and the easiest way to be the loudest is to be the hater.

The idea that feeling confident and feeling misunderstood are mutually exclusive really bugs me.

I try not to do anything I don't like, so I stay motivated pretty easily.

I think it was my mom's attitude about art and being part of the narcissistic digital generation or whatever that made me think anyone would care what I had to say about anything!

One thing that I always liked about fashion was that it was tied in with music and art and film.

I think people get excited about someone discovering something that blew their mind when they were younger. I think it makes people kind of nostalgic and happy. That's one of the really great things about the Internet, that it can bring people together in that way of just being interested in the same stuff.

If the next thing I do is not necessarily filling the role of 'the future of journalism,' it'll probably be whatever is making me happiest, and that's enough for me.

There are moments when I am really not happy with how I look, or I think it would be an easy way out to try and do the conventionally attractive thing. But part of it is that I don't have the energy to put on, like, makeup. If people want to do that, that's fine. But I've learned that it's not for me.

Fashion intersects a lot with art and film and music, and that was appealing to me. I read a bunch of fashion blogs and wanted to be part of the community.

I get kind of sad when I look at all of my magazines and think about how at one time I was much more impressed with a certain fashion editorial, or how I feel like I can't really relate to being that excited about fashion anymore. Maybe it's being jaded, but I honestly like that now, when something's really good, I feel more affected by it.

I understand that a lot of girls feel encouraged by what I have been able to do, but I've never felt like I'm a role model. I'm not concerned with building a great legacy or anything because I'll be dead so it won't matter.

I think it'd be great to own a fun concept store with my friends and just sell books and records.

I feel lucky in that I don't really have to go to college to study something job-specific. I just want to go to learn about what is interesting to me and learn about the classes that you don't really get to take in high school because you have to take the basics.

Meaning lies in the magic of the coincidence that you should come across work at just the right time.

There's danger in glorifying negative emotions as fuel for art.

We all have the people we follow on Tumblr whose opinions or taste we respect. And I think because you see so much more variety of opinions and everything on the internet, it's less decided that something is good or bad. It's more like we all just sort of like what we like.

I'm not exactly in a position where I get to be super-picky about the roles I get. But I would also never want to be a part of something that I think is poor in taste or doesn't align with what I believe in.

I've never really felt like a journalist. I've felt like a writer and a diarist. I have made myself vulnerable in my writing, and I think that vulnerability makes people strong. My favorite performances or works of art are always people showing that side of themselves.

I did community theater and kids programs at professional theaters and plays at school and voice lessons for seven years. I stopped because it was so time-consuming. But then I realized that I had access to this world where I could go on auditions. And there wasn't too much of an identity crisis when I started acting professionally because I had been acting longer than I had been writing. It didn't feel new.

I feel like a young adult. In high school I never felt like my professional life and my personal life were at odds, because my job has never been to be a role model for young women or teenagers.

My only job has been to say that you have to, try different things and let yourself become a different person, have experiences.

Some of what makes growing up hard for famous kids is that they don't have room to do immature stuff. I was really happy that I could go to school and hang out behind the alley and be somewhat irresponsible.

I feel lucky in that I don't really have to go to college to study something job-specific. I just want to go to learn about what is interesting to me and learn about the classes that you don't really get to take in high school because you have to take the basics.

I do find working with people in the entertainment industry hard. It can cause anxiety and depression.

When I wrote my blog and went to fashion week, I got a lot of shade from older editors about paying my dues and educating myself. I get where they were coming from, but it's also weird now to see their institutions scramble to use the internet in a way that's not savvy, but genuinely effective and exciting to people. I've been doing that for years.

Graduating high school was really emotional for me. I'd obviously made a huge thing out of what that experience was for me, and saying goodbye to it was very weird. So I had to be like, boom, onward and upward.

Just really be passionate and stick to your creative vision. Because it's competitive, and there are so many mind games and so many things that could get in the way. But success is the best revenge, so build yourself up rather than knock others down.

I will try to hold on to the intense feeling. I will both be glad that that’s no longer happening and kind of miss it. When you’re 14, you’re basically on drugs all the time—the hormones in your body are so crazy. But I really loved and appreciated the intensity of that. And you’re experiencing everything for the first time, so everything feels like an epiphany. And, like, I really liked the experience of having a crush, because I was like, this is my thing and it doesn’t have to do with you and you’re just some dummy boy for me to project on.

The best cure for procrastination is to have so much on your plate that procrastination is no longer an option.

Then, people expect women to be that easy to understand, and women are mad at themselves for not being that simple- When in actuality, women ARE complicated. Women are multifaceted. Not because women are crazy . But because people are crazy, and women happen to be people.

Women are complicated. Not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy, and women happen to be people.

What makes a strong female character is a character who has weaknesses, who has flaws, who is maybe not immediately likable, but eventually relatable.

I wanted to start a website for teenaged girls that was not kind of this one-dimensional strong character empowerment thing, because one thing that can be very alienating about a misconception of feminism is that girls then think that to be feminists, they have to live up to being perfectly consistent in their beliefs, never being insecure, never having doubts, having all the answers...and this is not true and actually, recognizing all the contradictions I was feeling became easier once I realized that feminism was not a rule book but a discussion, a conversation, a process.

If you are intimidated by the artists who came before you, understand you too have a place, right next to them.

You don’t have to be special, you just have to be kind.

Feminism is not a rulebook, but a discussion, a conversation, a process.

I try to make everything creative because it's stimulating. There is this great Stanley Kubrick quote somewhere about how life is sort of bad and how creating is important because it lets a little light in.

You don’t need to be a completely complete human right now … That’s what makes you human.