Helen Oyeyemi Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy...

Helen Oyeyemi
Because he says he can't stand you and you act like you can't stand him, and whenever a man and a woman behave like that toward each other, it usually means something's going on.

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

Helen Oyeyemi
I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don't have names.

Helen Oyeyemi
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
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
This was a little house, with a ceiling that kept getting higher and higher, a hot place with no windows. This was anger.

Helen Oyeyemi
Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. The poem tells me it's no big deal that I'm not like Snow. I can be another thing; I'm meant to be another thing.

Helen Oyeyemi
The girl was lighter without her heart. She danced barefoot on the hot roads, and her feet were not cut by the glass or stones that studded her way. She spoke to the dead whenever they visited her. She tried to be kind, but they realised that they no longer had anything in common with her, and she realised it, too. So they went their separate ways.

Helen Oyeyemi
There were days when he touched the tip of her nose and it was enough, a miracle of plenty.

Helen Oyeyemi
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I collected pictures and I drew pictures and I looked at the pictures by myself. And because no one else ever saw them, the pictures were perfect and true. They were alive.

Helen Oyeyemi