Helen Oyeyemi Quotes

"‘You weren’t, though! If that had been my father ’handling that’, she would’ve been flat on the floor with a few teeth missing!’” (Page 198)

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.

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.

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.

"He was looking at her, but in a distracted manner, as if she was something to look at while he waited for something else.”(Page 15)

It was the usual struggle between one who loves by accepting burdens and one who loves by refusing to be one.

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.

I was so jealous it burned, and I knew I had to let it alone or I'd break something inside me.

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.

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

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.

“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.

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.

A song called 'Earth Angel' played in her head all morning—also three trumpets and a piano.

"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