Helen Oyeyemi Quotes

"Who is this woman who has a Nigerian maiden name in a British passport, who stands here wearing denim shorts and a strappy yellow top, with a white man and a half-and-half child?" (Chapter 2, Page 12)

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.”

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.

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?

“What do you think of Poe?"

And she walked away, and she walked away, and that was that, and that was that.

She won't forget or recover, she is inconsolable.

But then, maybe "I don't believe in you" is the cruelest way to kill a monster.

“To you who eat a lot of rice because you are lonely

"Jesus doesn’t have lips as big as yours, and his skin is fair. How can you ever be as good as him on the outside when there’s nothing of him on your face?” (Page 246)

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.

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

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.

"In Nigeria, her mother had said, children were always getting themselves into mischief, and surely that was better than sitting inside reading and staring into space all day.” (Part 1, Chapter 3, Page 21)

The water was so cold on her skin that it felt dry.”