Helen Oyeyemi Quotes

And other times—too often, maybe—I don't dare have an opinion in case it upsets anyone.

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.

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

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

Easy to see the solution when you're not in the story, isn't it.

Maybe she was not really like that. It's just that I would prefer you to think that what happened to her was justified.

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?

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.

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.

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

The whole thing was so intense, so full of hurt that when I look back at it I squint. I want it forgotten.

Love. I'm not capable of it, can't even approach it from the side, let alone head-on. Nor am I alone in this—everyone is like this, the liars. Singing songs and painting pictures and telling each other stories about love and its mysteries and marvelous properties, myths to keep morale up—maybe one day it'll materialize. But I can say it ten times a day, a hundred times, 'I love you,' to anyone and anything, to a woman, to a pair of pruning shears. I've said it without meaning it at all, taken love's name in vain and gone dismally unpunished. Love will never be real, or if it is, it has no power. No power. There's only covetousness, and if what we covet can't be won with gentle words—and often it can't—then there is force.

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.”

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.

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.