Helen Oyeyemi > Quotes

“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, Mr. Fox

“Please tell 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 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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“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, Boy, Snow, Bird

“I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don't have names.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“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, Mr. Fox

“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, Boy, Snow, Bird

“It was the usual struggle between one who loves by accepting burdens and one who loves by refusing to be one.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“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.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“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, White Is for Witching

“… 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, Mr. Fox

“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, Mr. Fox

“What you're doing is building a horrible kind of logic. People read what you write and they say, 'Yes, he is talking about things that really happen,' and they keep reading, and it makes sense to them. You're explaining things that can't be defended, and the explanations themselves are mad, just bizarre — but you offer them with such confidence. It was because she kept the chain on the door; it was because he needed to let off steam after a hard day's scraping and bowing at work; it was because she was irritating and stupid; it was because she lied to him, made a fool of him; it was because she had to die, she just had to, it makes dramatic sense; it was because 'nothing is more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman'; it was because of this, it was because of that. It's obscene to make such things reasonable.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“Once you let people know anything about what you think, that's it, you're dead. Then they'll be jumping about in your mind, taking things out, holding them up to the light and killing them, yes, killing them, because thoughts are supposed to stay and grow in quiet, dark places, like butterflies in cocoons.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl

“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, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“That's the ideal meeting...once upon a time, only once, unexpectedly, then never again.”
― Helen Oyeyemi

“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, Mr. Fox

“But then, maybe “I don’t believe in you” is the cruelest way to kill a monster.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“For reasons of my own I take note of the way people act when they’re around mirrors.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird

“You don’t return people’s smiles—it’s perfectly clear to you that people can smile and smile and still be villains.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird

“If you should find yourself in a place that is indifferent to you and there is someone there that your spirit stretches to, then that person is kin.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, The Opposite House

“With boys there was a fundamental assumption that they had a right to be there—not always, but more often than not. With girls, Why her? came up so quickly.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“And she walked away, and she walked away, and that was that, and that was that.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“... it's not whiteness itself that sets Them against Us, but the worship of whiteness. Same goes if you swap whiteness out for other things-- fancy possessions for sure, pedigree, maybe youth too... we beat Them (and spare ourselves a lot of tedium and terror) by declining to worship.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird

“And without further argument he unsheathed the sword and cleaved Miss Foxe's head from her neck. He knew what was supposed to happen. He knew that this awkward, whispering creature before him should now transform into a princess - dazzlingly beautiful, free, and made wise by her hardship.

That is not what happened.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“The general advice is always be yourself, be yourself, which only makes sense if you haven't got an attitude problem.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird

“I was born, and then I was quietly resentful of that fact for a few years...but then I went to a library and it was okay.”
― Helen Oyeyemi

“I've read that madness is present when everything you see and hear takes on an equal significance. A dead bird makes you cry, and so does a doorknob.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“In Narnia a girl might ring a bell in a deserted temple and feel the chime in her eyes, pure as the freeze that forces tears. Then when the sound dies out, the White Witch wakes. It was like, I want to touch you, and I can touch you, now what next, a dagger?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“To you who eat a lot of rice because you are lonely
To you who sleep a lot because you are bored
To you who cry a lot because you are sad
I write this down.
Chew on your feelings that are cornered
Like you would chew on rice.

Anyway life is something that you need to digest.

- Chunyang Hee

("sorry" doesn't sweeten her tea)”
― Helen oyeyemi , What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Would that be dangerous, to not look while being looked at?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl