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Helen Oyeyemi
82 quotes
“I also love books of people learning to do this like going to ballet school, or how to ride horses. There's just something about the process and setback's it's very interesting.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only way to try and interrogate or possibly persuade stories to reveal something about themselves is to make all these provocations and assaults on them, and try and unpack them and unpick their seams and see if they react.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Please tell me a story about a girl who gets away." I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. "Gets away from what, though?" "From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn't really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off of the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like 'happy' and 'good' will never find her." "You don't want her to be happy and good?" "I'm not sure what's really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free. Now. Please begin." White for Witching (2010) p 165”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...a place can live in you without letting you know about it for the longest time.” Parasol Against the Axe (2024)”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her heart was heavy because it was open, and so things filled it, and so things rushed out of it, but still the heart kept beating, tough and frighteningly powerful and meaning to shrug off the rest of her and continue on its own”. Mr Fox (2011) p 171”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You don’t return people’s smiles—it’s perfectly clear to you that people can smile and smile and still be villains." Boy, Snow, Bird (2014) p 8”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The water was so cold on her skin that it felt dry.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She thought I hadn't seen her, but she's no good at hiding her intentions. She can't help tiptoeing around with a finger to her lips at key moments.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was like dancing with a mask that was attached to a stick—she dared not lower it, no matter how tiring it was to hold the mask up. She was the ugly girl at the ball.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is the meaning of it? Three creaks, three weeks? If she comes back for her shoes in three days, then I only need to empty them another three times. If it really is three weeks that were meant, what then. If three months, what then. Three years. That's why I had to write it down now. By then I may no longer believe I heard anything in Miri's room.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole thing was so intense, so full of hurt that when I look back at it I squint. I want it forgotten.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was so jealous it burned, and I knew I had to let it alone or I'd break something inside me.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love sleeping. Waking is more and more hateful the older I get. I say this as if I've lived too long. I'm twenty-two.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As always, the soucouyant seemed more lonely than bad. Maybe that was her trick, her ability to make it so you couldn't decide if she was a monster.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She is a double danger—there is the danger of meeting her, and the danger of becoming her. Does the nightmare of her belong to everyone, or just to me?”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maybe she was not really like that. It's just that I would prefer you to think that what happened to her was justified.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Easy to see the solution when you're not in the story, isn't it.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She won't forget or recover, she is inconsolable.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A song called 'Earth Angel' played in her head all morning—also three trumpets and a piano.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her heart's breaking. It breaks three times a week on account of people treating her so badly, and she knows that all you can do is laugh it off.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And other times—too often, maybe—I don't dare have an opinion in case it upsets anyone.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'But what will I do for a whole year?'”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had had such a strong feeling that she needed to talk to someone who would tell her some secret that would make everything alright. She had been unable to think who it was.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His heavy eyebrows lowered and he made some small, involuntary gesture with his hand that was recognisably superstitious, as if the words 'God forbid' had flowed into his body.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I examined the portraits nearest to me but couldn't get past the sensation that here was the same man over and over, crouched in old boxes, readying himself to spit on my plate.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One or the other of us said 'I can't,' and if it was me I don't know why because I wanted to. Maybe I'm just remembering it wrongly to help me get over the rejection.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She smiled with a scary energy, as if she had been told to at gunpoint.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm not saying I'm amazing or anything, but I'm decent-looking. Why shouldn't a decent-looking girl expect to be kissed?”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was always weak in the head—that must be it. I can't seem to care anymore about what I'm supposed to do.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our exchanges always seem to turn into whatever he wants them to.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Have you ever heard a note in someone's voice that said 'This is the end?' I heard it in the next words he said to me, and I stopped listening.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Have you forgotten about our fox?”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I almost forgot to mention another fox I know of—a very wicked fox indeed. But you are tired of hearing about foxes now, so I won't go on.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was . . . a mirror that crawled across the wall in a wooden frame. When I go into Miri's room all I can see, all I can think of is that enormous mirror, like a lake on the wall.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What do you think of Poe?”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He's awful. He was obviously . . . what's the term . . . 'disappointed in love' at some point. He probably never smiled again. The pages are just bursting with his longing for women to suffer. If he ever met me he'd probably punch me on the nose.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think Poe's quite good, actually. The whole casual horror thing. Like someone standing next to you and screaming their head off and you asking them what the fuck and them stopping for a moment to say 'Oh you know, I'm just afraid of Death' and then they keep on with the screaming.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Solitary people, these book lovers. I think it's swell that there are people you don't have to worry about when you don't see them for a long time, you don't have to wonder what they do, how they're getting along with themselves. You just know that they're all right, and probably doing something they like.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Imagine having a mother who worries that you read too much. The question is, what is it that's supposed to happen to people who read too much? How can you tell when someone's crossed the line.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don't have names.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found. Maybe the friend will talk about you sometimes, to other friends that live around him, and then that’s almost as good as being there yourself. You’re in several places at once! In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far as to say that the further away your friends, and the more spread out they are the better your chances of going safely through the world…”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first coffee of the morning is never, ever, ready quickly enough. You die before it’s ready and then your ghost pours the resurrection potion out of the moka pot.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the usual struggle between one who loves by accepting burdens and one who loves by refusing to be one.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish there was someone I could have written to after that, someone I could have written to explain how awful it was to have someone touch you, then look at you properly and change his mind.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“… there’s a difference between having no one because you’ve chosen it and having no one because everyone has been taken away.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That's the ideal meeting...once upon a time, only once, unexpectedly, then never again.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It occurred to me that I was unhappy. And it didn’t feel so very terrible. No urgency, nothing. I could slip out of my life on a slow wave like this—it didn’t matter. I don’t have to be happy. All I have to do is hold on to something and wait.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A library at night is full of sounds: the unread books can't stand it any longer and announce their contents, some boasting, some shy, some devious.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But then, maybe “I don’t believe in you” is the cruelest way to kill a monster.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For reasons of my own I take note of the way people act when they’re around mirrors.”
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source